17 OCT 2026 — Seven Chinese men accused of running a fake cryptocurrency investment scheme from two flats in Forest City, the Johor development opposite Singapore, pleaded not guilty in a Johor Bahru court on 16 October. The charge they face, conspiracy to cheat, carries a maximum of six months in prison. Three days earlier, courts in China sentenced three bosses of a Myanmar scam syndicate to death.
The gap between those penalties says a good deal about where the region's scam crackdown stands, and why Malaysia's new cybercrime law matters.
The Forest City case
According to the New Straits Times, the seven men, aged 22 to 33 and including three students, are jointly charged with conspiring to carry out a fraudulent investment scheme involving non-existent cryptocurrency at two residential units in Forest City on 1 October. The charge falls under Section 120B(2) of the Penal Code read with Section 417, the cheating provision. That carries up to six months' imprisonment, a fine or both.
The court granted each man bail of RM7,000, below the RM15,000 the prosecution sought, and fixed 11 November for the next mention. Three of the men also face immigration charges for entering Malaysia without a valid pass. Those carry heavier penalties of up to five years in prison and caning.
A pattern of light penalties
This is not the first scam case from the area. In July, Johor police raided 27 flats and five bungalows in Forest City and arrested 335 people, mostly Chinese nationals, from two syndicates running fake crypto investments and romance scams aimed at victims in China and Indonesia, the NST reported. Police seized 313 computers and 1,557 mobile phones.
Penalties after such raids can be modest. In September, two Chinese men who admitted conspiring to run a bogus crypto scheme at a resort in Permas Jaya were fined RM4,700 each under the same Section 120B(2), the NST reported. That is less than two months of the RM2,500 to RM4,000 monthly salaries police said scam recruits in Forest City had been promised.
China's approach
China is at the opposite end of the scale. On 13 October, courts in Fujian sentenced Wei Huairen, head of the Wei family syndicate in Myanmar's Kokang region, along with two associates, to death for running cross-border telecoms fraud networks that caused the deaths of four Chinese nationals, the South China Morning Post reported. In all, 61 members of the syndicate were convicted, three receiving life sentences and 55 prison terms of up to 24 years.
Not like for like
The two cases are not equivalent. The Wei syndicate ran compounds with detention and extortion, while the Forest City defendants are accused of a single scheme on one day. The pairing does show how far apart the region's legal tools are, as RECATOOLS has tracked in its coverage of scam centres in Cambodia and elsewhere.
Malaysia's new law
Malaysia has already legislated to close the gap. Parliament passed the Cybercrime Bill in July, and Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said this week the Act is expected to come into force in early 2027, the NST reported. It sits alongside new Penal Code provisions on scams. Until then, cases like this one will continue to be charged under general cheating provisions written long before scam compounds existed. Malaysians lost RM2.97 billion to cybercrime in 2025, according to figures cited in Parliament.
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