Land Scams Involving the Power of Attorney in Land Dealings in Malaysia

The Power of Attorney (PA) is a legal instrument or document that is created by the landowner (the Donor) in favour of the recipient of the PA (the Donee) as the Donor’s attorney in land transactions. The recent statistics for 2009 – 2013 issued by the Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID), Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) indicate that the misuse of PA in land transactions is the most common modus operandi used in land scam incidents. A huge increase in land scam cases using the PA is very alarming primarily because such incidents could potentially compromise the security and legal ownership of registered lands. Thus, this paper attempts to analyse land scams involving the PA and to make some recommendations or suggestions that could prevent the occurrence of these cases in the future. The study will also scrutinise the provisions of the Power of Attorney Act 1949 in order to determine whether such a statute could provide some solution to this problem. The paper is largely based on socio-legal study that adopts a qualitative approach. It also involves semi-structured interviews with the Registrar, Land Administrator as well as officers at land offices in addition to literature review and content analysis. The study concludes that fraudsters employ several methods in land scam incidents using the PA. It is further observed that the Power of Attorney Act 1949 is currently very much deficient in handling or tackling such a crime in the country.