In a bid to stamp out the growing menace of cyber crimes, Malaysian police today said it plans to set up 'a one-stop centre' to curb commercial crimes and threats on the net.

Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Wira Syed Ismail Syed Azizan said the centre would be modelled after the Taiwan Cybercrime Prevention and Fighting Centre which managed to control cyber crimes.

The setting up of the centre will help speed up commercial crime investigations as time is crucial, he told reporters.

"For example, when a customer is duped by an online banking scam, he must contact the centre quickly to enable to the police to tell the bank to block the transaction," he said.

He said besides the one-stop centre, the Commercial Criminal Investigation Department (CCID) was also planning set up a database on white-collar criminals, including their modus operandi through police intelligence and complaints from victims.

"At present, the data is done manually and an application for facilities to set up the database had been submitted to the Logistics Department.

We hope it can be set up in June or July," he said.

Cases involving misuse of information and communication technology (ICT) have been growing since 2000 and transcended national boundaries, he said, adding that they had changed with times from merely slanders, instigations and intimidations.

Referring to the surge in the internet users by 45.2 per cent over the last 10 years, he said this had resulted in cyber criminals unleashing new scams at every opportunity.

In retrospect, he said corporate, financial, insurance and cooperative frauds began to emerge in the 1980s followed by organised credit card, ATM, Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and share scams which transcended across borders in 1990s.

He said fraud, criminal breach of trust and cyber crimes took a turn for the worse in 2009 with 24,590 cases involving the loss of more than a billion ringgit national news agency Bernama said.