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Telephone calls made by fraudsters purpottedly from the Bukit Aman Federal police headquarters in an attempt to scare and cheat members of public are on the rise.

The syndicates randomly call their potential victims on their handphones using the Internet.

With the use of a special software, the crooks are able to select any telephone number of their choice to be displayed on the handphone screens of their potential victims including that off Bukit Aman.

Claiming to be police officers, the crooks who often use the numbers 03-22662222, 03-22663444 and other extention numbers, told potential victims had run foul with the law for criminal offences or road traffic cases.

The fraudsters then offered to settle the cases for a bribe.

Dozens of ignorant individuals have lost thousand ringgits to these fraudsters after depositing the so called "bribes" into bank accounts given by the fraudsters.

Federal police Public Affairs head ACP Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf said they were being inundated with more than 50 telephone calls daily from members of public who complained of receiving such calls from Bukit Aman.

"The syndicate members try convince their potential victims that they are calling from Bukit Aman.

"After receiving hundreds of such complains, we began a probe and decided to check on the outgoing calls from our headquarters and discovered that there were no such calls ever made to the telephone numbers of those who had brought this up to us," he said.

He urged members of the public to not fall for the ploy of the scammers and to verify such calls with the police.

He said those who received such calls should demand to know the callers name, rank and department and then call up Bukit Aman to verify if the call they received were genuine.

Ramli said such move can avoid any risk of members of the public being fleeced by fraudsters - SunDaily