Cryptocurrency is hard to trace, but CCID chief says commercial tech helping cops catch up to crooks

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 30 — Rather than cold hard cash, Malaysian criminals prefer to use cryptocurrency in their illicit activities like fraud, drug deals, robberies, selling hacked data, and ransom payments for kidnappings and murders in the Philippines.

This is because criminals perceive transactions involving cryptocurrencies as difficult to trace, Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf told Utusan Malaysia in a news report published today.

But Ramli said the police, specifically the Cryptocurrency Unit within the Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department, is now able to identify diverse transactions with digital currencies using commercial technology.

“For instance, in the kidnapping and murder cases of Malaysians in the Philippines, PDRM successfully traced ransom payments through a crypto wallet and identified the mastermind,” he was quoted as saying, using the Malay abbreviation for the Royal Malaysia Police.

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Sharing the information with their Philippine counterpart, the authorities managed to apprehend the suspects in those cases.

“We have also identified the cryptocurrency transactions involving locals selling personal data obtained through government-owned websites,” Ramli told the Malay newspaper.

He also said that Bukit Aman’s cryptocurrency analysis unit discovered that nearly 90 per cent of cryptocurrency-related crimes are linked to investment fraud.

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He said many victims fall prey to cryptocurrency investment schemes offering unrealistic returns of 100 per cent within a short time frame, leading to losses amounting to millions of ringgit.

Citing a recent case, he said an 80-year-old woman lost RM10 million in such a scam after participating in an investment scheme promoted through the WhatsApp group “accerx.com”.

According to Ramli, a total of 5,507 cases involving cryptocurrency investment fraud were recorded between 2019 and last year, with losses amounting to approximately RM417.3 million.

He noted that a significant number of these online fraud cases occurred through social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.