6,000 people scammed out of MVR 110M; not a single culprit caught

Over 6,000 people were scammed out of MVR 110 million between 2021 to up until March 17 when the Anti-Scam Center was set up, but not a single one of those culprits was caught, according to the police.

At a press briefing on Thursday morning Inspector of Police Adam Naveed, the Head of the Anti-Scam Center, said that the Maldives saw a sharp 200 percent spike in scams post-Covid-19 pandemic.

Over 6,000 people fell victim to scams between 2021 and March 17 this year, with the collective loss amounting to over MVR 110 million.

But police investigations failed to uncover the identities of any of the scammers.

“It is important for us all to know that we were not able to discover the identities of any of the scammers during any of the stages of when the scam money reached them in any of these cases,” said Naveed.

Naveed said the scammers hid behind technology and used deceptive techniques to evade the police, who had limited powers at the time to combat such cases.

An amendment made to the Criminal Procedure Code on March 17 now allows the police to rapid freeze bank accounts suspected of involvement in scams.

Naveed explained that back then, freezing bank accounts required obtaining court warrants, which was a complicated and lengthy process.

But now, the police can freeze bank accounts within minutes of a fraudulent transaction.

“The reality that everyone must accept is that the money isn’t going to be there when we come back with a court warrant,” he said.

1,663 cases of scams were reported since the Anti-Scam Center was set up.

While the cases involved 12 different types of scams, the most frequent were e-commerce scams – primarily those run through Facebook Marketplace, foreign exchange scams and impersonations.

The scams resulted in MVR 22.7 million in financial losses, of which only MVR 8.5 million or 37 percent has been recovered.

But, according to the police, the recovery rate is significantly higher than the 2 percent it had been before the Anti-Scam Center was set up.

The police urge victims to report scams immediately in order to improve chances for recovery of money.