An elderly man lashed out at a POSB employee when she refused to help him transfer S$3,000 from his bank account.

It turned out that the staff member had rightfully suspected him to be the victim of a love scam.

Request for suspicious transfer

In a Facebook post by DBS, the incident was said to have taken place at the POSB branch at Compass One in Sengkang.

A man in his 70s had strolled in at lunchtime and asked for help transferring S$3,000 from his bank account into another account.

Bank officer Rohani Hassan said that she asked him some "routine questions" that were typical when processing over-the-counter transfers.

She wrote her inquiries about the payee on a piece of paper, as the elderly man was hard of hearing.

"He answered that the transfer was to be made to a courier company, so they could 'release' a personal parcel meant for him. Alarm bells blared in my head," she recalled.

Man gets angry

Rohani added that she tried to explain this to the man in writing, but her efforts were futile.

"I can’t make the transfer for you, because I believe that you’re about to be scammed," Rohani said to the man, but the man instead got angry and started yelling.

"It’s my money, why can’t I make the transfer?" he shouted.

Rohani then turned to Deputy Service Manager Siew Lay for help.

When Siew Lay "rushed over" after witnessing the commotion, she asked for the payee’s account number so that she could run additional checks.

She found out that the account had been flagged for suspicious transactions.

And while the man had indicated that it was a business account, it turned out to be a personal bank account.

Police arrived

The staff tried to tell the elderly man this, but he only grew more agitated.

He even said that he’d like to close his account with DBS so that he could make the transfer at another bank.

Siew Lay thus called the police for help.

The police officers arrived within minutes and were able to convince the man to leave the bank.

It was later revealed that he was indeed the target of a love scam.

"From our experience with previous cases, scams of this nature tend to be more emotionally charged, hence his insistence," shared Siew Lay.

Siew Lay also described branch staff at the bank as the "last line of defence" when it comes to protecting customers from scams.

For their hard work in this incident, both employees received letters of appreciation from the police in September 2023.

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Top images via Wikipedia and DBS Facebook