NEWS reports of Malaysians returning home after spending arduous months in scam parks often entail horrific details of torture and even death.

These victims, who ended up being trafficked after falling prey to job scams, come from various backgrounds of age and education; naivety, has been touted by several experts as the key aspect for scammers to zero in when looking out for potential victims.

While scam parks are a widespread problem across the globe – as with the recent case of 43 Malaysians rescued from a scam park in Peru – a higher concentration of organised criminal syndicates has been found taking centrestage in Southeast Asia.

At the same time, the Foreign Ministry reveals that as of Nov 3, 518 Malaysians have been rescued from scam parks. The ministry is currently working to bring home another 26 from Myanmar.

Nevertheless, pertinent questions on the gullibility of victims remain – despite ongoing highlights of job scams, some still find themselves lured by promises of lucrative jobs.

A recent survey by a group of academicians finds a strong possibility of high-risk behaviours among potential victims when encountering job scams.

“It is possible that these victims tend to be impulsive upon being offered the opportunity to make huge sums of money as advertised by the scammers. I can agree that greed, plays a role as well,” says Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman’s Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Social and Policy Studies chairman Dr Chin Yee Mun.

Dr Chin, together with his counterparts from Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Academy of Contemporary Islamic Studies in Perlis and Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies (Huayan), held the survey to analyse Malaysians’ perception when engaging scammers.

The survey managed to gather 991 genuine samples; its original duration of a month was shortened to a week after it was tampered with by a bot which provided over a thousand fake respondents. Dr Chin believes the survey was hacked by the organised crime syndicates running the scam parks.

Ignorance, greed or naivety?

Criminologist Datuk Shahul Hamid Abd Rahim points out that many of the victims did not take long to think about the adverse possibility of making “easy money”.

“Regardless of their background, people can be lulled by fantastical promises of high-paying easy jobs.”

He says some even decide to take the risk due to financial constraints and gravitate towards any opportunity which promises higher returns.

“Older victims, who may seem to be more mature, may be facing financial difficulties. They will try their luck to make money overseas (disregarding the possibility of job scams).”

Hence, desperation is also a factor which leads to the problem.

“Those Malaysians fall for job scams in other countries because they are desperate for high-income jobs and lucrative incentives. Scammers often offer high salaries, luxurious accommodations, and other perks to attract potential victims.

“Due to ignorance, naivety and greed, they fall for these attractive offers,” says Universiti Sains Malaysia’s criminologist Datuk Dr P Sundramoorthy.

Some people, meanwhile, are trusting by nature and may be more susceptible to scams, he concedes.

Prominent criminal lawyer Datuk Zamri Idrus says scams usually take place due to two factors; expectations of beneficial returns, as well as fear of unfounded threats.

For the former, Zamri alludes to the willingness of victims to take up the risks of accepting lucrative offers despite the likelihood of them turning out to be bogus.

“Sometimes, they fall into such traps due to reasons that they feel will benefit them.”

At the same time, another typical scam example which usually takes place is when a victim is threatened with a bank account freeze, pending certain payments to be made.

“Such is a not physical threat. If they (the scammers) want to freeze your account, they can’t do it right away. There is a process involved.

“By the way, the freezing of an account simply means no transaction can be carried out using that particular account. You can still check and verify with relevant authorities.”

Awareness in numbers

Universiti Teknologi Mara Perlis’s Dr Azhar Abdul Rahman, who is part of Chin’s survey team, says the younger generation appears to be better informed of scams taking place in the country.

The respondents are from 16 to 60 years old, with more than 80% aged between 16 and 35.

“The age range with the highest response rate in the survey is from 18 to 24, given that these youth groups have online access to information.

“The majority of them said they knew someone who had engaged in scams. They may have heard about it from friends and family.

“(They had also read) newspapers and other media outlets also published reports on the encounters.

“With these factors, it can be concluded that the younger generation knows about scam parks.”

Comparatively, the older generation seems to have more experience in engaging with scammers. Out of the 38.22% of those who say that they had encountered elements of scam parks, 63.49% are aged between 41 and 45.

As for recognising scam tactics, 65% say they are aware of methods used by scammers, while 7.6% say otherwise.

The survey also finds that a majority of the Malay and Chinese respondents exhibit the highest percentage of individuals who have never encountered scam tactics.

Conversely, in a separate column, 4.55% say they had engaged in long-distance relationships, in reference to potential love scams, while about 1% say they had been frequently offered high-paying jobs that are “too good to be true”.

The survey was conducted by the three research institutions with Media in Arms, a media collaboration comprising five mainstream media – Chinese newspaper Sin Chew Daily, Malay daily Sinar Harian, local news broadcaster Astro Awani, Tamil newspaper Malaysia Nanban and The Star – which got together in February last year to share resources and collaborate on diversified news content.

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This article first appeared on TheStar.