Combating the Macau Scam in Malaysia: Strategies for Mitigation and Resolution from Civil Law and Sharī'ah Perspectives

Abstract

The phenomenon of cybercrime fraud that occurs in Malaysia has now become a hot topic of discussion. The financial loss and psychological distress experienced by the scam victims has brought attention to the Macau Scam problem in Malaysia. Due to the frequency of people who are too easily deceived by this syndicate’s modus operandi, Macau Scam every day becomes headlines in the newspaper. This causes people frustrated as fraud can happen to anyone if the public is not exposed or is not aware of this matter. There are various awareness campaigns that have been carried out by the authorities to reduce the risk of victim involvement in this fraud syndicate but there are still many more involved and show no reduction. To prevent people from being victims of this form of fraud and to maintain justice to stop this issue from getting worse, Malaysian law provides several protections and remedies. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the issues of Macau Scams in Malaysia and to investigate the adequacy of the existing Malaysian Cybers Laws in providing the protection and remedies to the affected victims from the perspective of Civil Law and Sharīah perspectives. In terms of methodology, researchers use a qualitative approach method consisting of document analysis where all information and data are obtained from primary and secondary sources which consist of various Acts, Enactments, journal articles, books, newspapers, and many others. As a result of document analysis, researchers found that several cyber laws that can be used to overcome this problem such as Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act [Act 613], Section 420 of the Penal Code [Act 574], the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 [Act 588], Computer Crime Act 1997 [Act 563], Electronic Commerce Act 2006 [658], Personal Data Protection Act 2010 [709] and Consumer Protection Act 1999 [Act 599] (Amendment 2010) while the level of awareness among the public is one of the leading causes of this scam issue.