Scam situation in S'pore worsens, 6-month losses total $386m

The scams situation here worsened as the number of cases increased by 16.3 per cent, with victims losing over $385.6 million in the first six months of 2024.

If the trend continues, scams losses could exceed $770 million by the end of the year, according to the police mid-year scams and cybercrime statistics released on Aug 22.

The annual record stands at $660.7 million lost in 2022.

In the first half of 2024, the number of cases increased by 16.3 per cent to 26,587, from 22,853 during the same period in 2023.

Victims in 2024 lost more than $385.6 million, which is 24.6 per cent more than the $309.4 million lost in the first half of 2023.

In 86 per cent of the cases, the scammers did not gain control of the victims’ accounts, but had manipulated them into transferring money to the criminals.

At the media briefing, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling said these figures were worrying.

She said: “There are a large number of scam cases which are attributed to self-effected transfers from victims, and this is concerning. Because this shows many of the victims were actually socially manipulated into transferring their monies into scam accounts.”

Ms Sun said of particular concern were investment and government officials impersonation scams.

While the 3,330 cases of investment scams made up only 12.5 per cent of the total number of scam cases in the first half of 2024, victims lost $133.4 million, the highest amount lost of all scams.

This averages out to about $40,000 lost by victims in each case of investment scam.

But the average amount a victim of a government officials impersonation scam lost was almost three times more.

There were 580 cases of such scams in the first half of 2024, with victims losing $67.5 million. This averages out to more than $116,500 lost per case.

There was some good news with sharp declines in the number of fake friend call scams.

It dipped by 38.2 per cent to 2,368 cases from 3,832 cases in 2023. The amount lost also fell from $12.9 million in the first half of 2023 to about $8.1 million for the same period in 2024.

There was also a drop in malware-enabled scams, which fell by 86.2 per cent to just 95 cases in the first half of 2024. There were 687 cases during the same period in 2023.

The amount lost also fell by 96.8 per cent from $9.1 million to $295,000 in 2024.

Such scams were a scourge in 2023 under the guise of phone apps for food purchase, home cleaning or pet grooming services.

The assistant director of the police’s Anti-Scam Command (ASC), Assistant Commissioner of Police Aileen Yap, said anti-malware measures for banking apps, and enhanced protection features for Android phones by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and Google, helped tackle the problem.

She said in the first half of 2024, the police worked with banks and prevented over $204 million of potential losses to scams.

AC Yap added the co-location of staff from Carousell and Shopee at the ASC led to 2,700 scam-tainted accounts and suspicious advertisements being taken down in the first half of 2024.

Meanwhile, Meta appears to be more cooperative in the fight against scams, after Ms Sun had publicly called on it to do so in February.

A pilot programme to verify the identity of risky sellers on Facebook Marketplace and risky advertisers on Facebook began in June.

MHA will assess the effectiveness of the measures on Facebook Marketplace between June 1 and Nov 30, and on Facebook between June 1 and Dec 31.

If the number of e-commerce scams reported on Facebook Marketplace does not drop significantly, MHA will require Facebook to verify the identity of all Marketplace sellers by March 1, 2025.

Likewise if the number of scam reports arising from advertisements on Facebook does not drop significantly, MHA will require Facebook to verify the identity of all advertisers by April 1, 2025.

The police said more details of the pilot will be provided when it concludes towards the end of 2024.