A retired elderly woman, 73, was nearly scammed of S$163,000 — her Great Eastern insurance policy surrender value, and savings in her OCBC bank account.

According to OCBC, the scam ran from December 2023 to January 2024 and involved multiple scammers, including some pretending to be police officers from China.

The scam was averted by staff from OCBC and Great Eastern Singapore on Jan. 4, 2024, when the woman wanted to surrender her insurance policy and deposit the funds from the surrendered policy in an account she had opened at another bank.

Received a letter stating that she would receive a payout of S$6,000

Speaking to the media, Mary (not her real name), said she received a fake letter from an insurer on Dec. 1, 2023.

The letter, dated Nov. 28, 2023, said Mary was due to receive a payout of S$6,000 and contained a number she could call about the payout.

Upon calling the number to inquire further, Mary spoke to someone with a male voice, with what sounded like a mainland Chinese accent.

Told by scammer that her name had been used to apply for a credit card in China

The man, who said his name was Huang, said he was from a "bank security department" and asked the victim if she had applied for a credit card.

When Mary replied she had not, Huang replied that someone had used her name to open a credit card account in China on Nov. 5, 2023, which "gave her a shock".

Mary was then transferred to another person posing as "Chinese police" by the name of "Officer Lin". This person had a local mobile number and spoke with her via video call while wearing a mask.

She was told that someone had used her "credit card" to spend about RMB300,000 (S$57,200) and was asked again if she had applied for a credit card in China.

The "officer" also showed her images of the credit card in question and claimed that they were working with the local authorities on the case. "Officer Lin" also said the case involved a scammer transferring money to the U.S..

Mary recalled that she began to feel afraid at this point.

She was also given the phone number of "Officer Lin’s police station".

Scammer claimed she had to assist in investigations

Mary was then transferred to another police officer – “Officer Ying” – who told her that she was impersonated in China. To prove her innocence, "Officer Ying" said, she had to assist with the investigations.

She was to report to “Officer Lin” every morning and night via WhatsApp text, and was instructed not to tell her children about the matter, and to hide the interactions by using earpieces for calls.

Mary also added that although she stayed with her son, he did not notice what was happening as he was often busy at work.

Meanwhile, "Officer Ying" instructed the victim to open another local bank account and coached her on what to say to the bank staff to avoid suspicion.

Acting on these instructions, Mary opened a new local bank account at UOB on Dec. 27, 2023, and transferred S$1,000 into the account.

Told to surrender one of her insurance polices worth over S$93,000

When Mary informed “Officer Ying” via WhatsApp call that she had three Great Eastern insurance policies under her name, she was instructed to surrender one of the policies. The surrender value was around S$93,000.

On Jan. 4, 2024, Mary visited Great Eastern Singapore's Westgate branch on Jan. 4, 2024 to surrender the policy even though she would incur a loss of more than S$15,000 on it.

She insisted the funds were for "her son to open a pawnshop business" and said she also wanted to mortgage their house.

Customer service officer became suspicious of her request as it was similar to earlier case

This triggered the "first red flag" for Great Eastern customer service officer Toh Ming Ann, as he felt that mortgaging the house under such circumstances could be against government regulations.

Toh added that his suspicions grew as he had dealt with a similar case in December 2023 where a different victim requested for a liquidation of four policies — which would have incurred a loss — for the purchase of a house and renovation fees. Back then, Toh escalated the case to OCBC, which alerted the police. As a result, the victim was prevented from potentially losing over S$250,000.

Toh was able to recognise the similarities between the December 2023 case and Mary's case.

Mary told him she wanted to transfer the funds of the surrendered policy to a UOB account. However, as Mary is not PayNow-registered, she could only transfer the money by direct credit to her UOB account.

Thus, when Toh asked her a second time if she was really sure about transferring the money the UOB account, Mary offered her OCBC account instead.

Mary also mentioned that she intended to eventually transfer all of the money in her OCBC account into the UOB account.

Toh then reported the incident to the OCBC Anti-Scam unit, which alerted the Police Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) in turn.

Meanwhile, Mary's accounts were closely monitored by OCBC to ensure no suspicious transactions were made.

On the same day, officers from the ASC visited Mary at her home to convince her to make a police report as a scam victim.

The next day, Mary went to OCBC's Choa Chu Kang branch, where a customer service manager helped ensure things were in order before lifting the hold on her accounts.

They also advised her on scam prevention, and reminded her to ensure that she cancelled her instructions to GE to terminate her insurance policy.

The amount she could have lost was S$163,000 — comprising her policy surrender value and the savings in her OCBC account.

OCBC: 517 customers were stopped in 2023 from transferring S$2 million to scammers

OCBC told Mothership it detected and stopped 462 customers who wanted to digitally transfer nearly S$1 million to scammers in 2023.

Another 55 customers were stopped by OCBC's staff at its branches from transferring nearly S$1 million to scammers as well.

OCBC said scams involving the impersonation of government officials constituted less than five per cent of all scams reported to the bank.

Meanwhile, job scams and social media impersonation scams made up slightly more than half of the scams reported in 2023, followed by e-commerce scams at almost 20 per cent and investment scams at nearly 15 per cent.

Top left image via Unsplash, central photo via A G on Google Maps, right photo by OCBC