Police tie-up with computer experts
4th June 2004 (Malay Mail)
By Marhalim Abas and Azman Abdul Ghani

KUALA LUMPUR: Police are forging a new alliance with computer forensics experts to combat football bookies who have gone high -tech.

The co-operation is necessary as the bookies have become more sophisticated and police are finding it difficult to gather evidence against them Federal CID director Datuk Musa Hassan said they need to ensure that evidence of such activities were preserved so that those involved could be hauled to court.

Musa spoke to The Malay Mail after attending a special session with representatives of the National ICT Security and Emergency Response Centre (NISER) at a hotel in the city on Wednesday night.

The meeting was also attended by anti-vice, gaming and secret society chiefs from State police contingents.

Musa said that together with its forensics department and NISER's computer forensics experts, police would come up with a standard operating procedure.

This is to ensure that officers conducting raids on bookies would know what to do when they come across sophisticated operations.

"With the up-coming Euro 2004 football tournament, we need to come up with immediate solutions to combat this problem," he said.

"We have realised that developments in the electronics field and the proliferation of cyber crimes have made it necessary for police to be better equipped to tackle such problems." In their raids in the last few months, police discovered that the football bookies' operation differed from the normal four- digit gambling syndicates.

Most of the football bookies' transactions were conducted via the Internet and no paper record was kept, unlike the four -digit gambling syndicates.

Some of the bookies were also operating as the "back -room" for their counterparts overseas where the betting and money transactions took place.