KUALA LUMPUR – The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has indicted three senior executives of Telekom Malaysia’s (TM) US branch for allegedly misappropriating over US$20 million from the state-backed telecommunications giant.
Federal prosecutors accuse Hafiz Lockman, Yuzaimi Yusof, and Khanh Thuong Nguyen of executing a deliberate and calculated corporate fraud campaign between July 2020 and February 2026.
The FBI reveals that the defendants systematically deceived suppliers, auditors, and supervisors through a complex web of forged corporate records and identity theft.
Among the most jarring allegations in the indictment is the trio’s use of an AI-assisted impersonation tool to deceive human resources staff into harvesting the salaries of non-existent employees and interns.
This payroll scam ran alongside a broader scheme to inflate data capacity sales and cable procurement costs, which successfully routed a known US$2.9 million chunk of illicit payments straight into the defendants’ bank accounts.
While Hafiz was apprehended at San Francisco International Airport, the remaining two defendants surrendered to US authorities last month.
All three have been formally charged with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft. Notably, Telekom Malaysia itself avoided corporate charges by proactively reporting the internal corruption to US authorities, aligning with a DoJ policy designed to incentivize corporate whistleblowing.
Neither the defendants nor TM were immediately available for comment. – May 20, 2026