As of Oct. 2019, at least S$6 million has been lost by more than 156 victims of telecommunication scams in Singapore this year.

At least 50 victims made police report in Oct

From Jan. to Oct. 2019, there has been at least 156 victims who fell prey to phone scammers who pretend to be technical support staff from local telecommunication service providers such as Singtel and Starhub.

According to the Singapore Police Force (SPF), there were at least 50 such victims in the month of October alone.

In such scams, the phone scammers who are masquerading as Singtel or Starhub staff will  deceive victims into believing that there are issues with their modem or Internet connection.

They will then direct their victims to download applications like TeamViewer or AnyDesk onto their computers, allowing the scammers remote access to their devices, to "fix" any issue they have.

Woman loses S$300,000 to phone scammers

Among the scams reported this year, a 65 year-old woman, Lee, had lost about S$300,000 to phone scammers pretending to be Singtel staff, according to Straits Times (ST).

On Nov. 13, Lee received a call from who she thought was a Singtel customer service personnel, informing her about problems with her broadband connection.

The caller told her that he would help to solve any problem she was having with her Wi-Fi connection if she followed his instructions, and Lee ended up staying on the call with him for over two hours, following his step-by-step instructions.

During the two-hour call, he got Lee to open her Internet banking account, and gave him very personal information, including a one-time password and her latest transactions.

He had even connected her to the "cyber police", which turned out to be another scammer, who told her that her IP address was being used in various countries.

"Throughout this process, they kept telling me not to talk to anybody, not to inform anybody, and to keep the land line on and my hand phone switched off," Lee said.

The scammer also told Lee that the cyber police would come to her house, and gave her some codes to pass to the cyber police when they swung by.

Such antics were all part of their scheme to convince her, which included sending her a world map, and a message from "Interpol" with an attached picture of a Russian man, who was supposedly using her account.

After the call ended, she tried to call the official Singtel customer service number on another line, but did not get through.

She called her bank, and found out that several transfers had been made from her account, to other local and foreign accounts as well.

She simply followed through, and before she knew it, the scammers made off with over S$300,000 from three different bank accounts.

Lee did not manage to recover a single cent.

Beware of such unsolicited calls

The police advise members of the public who have fallen prey to such scams to immediately turn off their computers to halt further activities, report the incident to their banks and change their Internet banking information as well as make a police report immediately.

Members of the public are advised to ignore instructions from such callers and just ignore such calls in general, as no telecommunication service provider or government agency will request for personal details or access to your online bank account.

If you wish to provide any information related to such scams, please call the Police hotline at 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness. If you require urgent Police assistance, please dial ‘999’.

Top image via via Pixabay, Wikipedia Commons