Scammers tricked S'pore-based firm CEO into authorising S$46.5 million transfer by posing as his chairman

Scammers tricked a Singapore-based company CEO into authorising a US$36.3 million (S$46.5 million) transfer.

The scammers impersonated his firm’s chairman, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said in a May 20 news release.

It was one of the cases uncovered during Operation Frontier+ III, a two-month international crackdown on transnational scams.

Singapore and nine foreign law enforcement agencies were involved in the coordinated anti-scam crackdown from Mar. 10 to May 7.

What happened

A CEO of the company based in Singapore received a WhatsApp call from a scammer on Apr. 9.

The scammer was posing as the chairman of his firm’s headquarters.

The CEO was instructed to assume responsibility for an acquisition project.

The CEO subsequently directed his chief financial officer to arrange the funding.

Between Apr. 13 and 17, a total of US$36.3 million was transferred from the company’s overseas and local bank accounts — US$27.1 million originated from the Luxembourg subsidiary and US$9.7 million from the Singapore entity — into two local OCBC accounts.

The deception was uncovered on Apr. 17 after the CEO verified the acquisition with the actual chairman, police said.

The Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) intervened and seized US$9.7 million in the local accounts.

But approximately US$26.5 million had already been wired to bank accounts in Hong Kong.

The police immediately contacted Hong Kong’s Anti-Deception Coordination Centre.

More than US$11.1 million from Hong Kong bank accounts and associated cryptocurrency wallets were seized.

Two Singaporeans who facilitated the opening of a corporate bank account to receive the illicit funds were arrested.

Investigations are ongoing.

Another business email compromise scam

The police said they received another report on Apr. 30 related to another business email compromise scam.

A Singapore-based commodity trading firm had been deceived into transferring US$6.6 million to a fraudulent bank account in Oman.

The victim’s staff had received an email that looked like it was from its legitimate supplier.

However, the domain name had been subtly altered by transposing two letters.

The spoofed address was "virtually indistinguishable from the genuine one”, according to the police.

The staff initiated the transfer of the full amount to the fraudulent bank account as the request was believed to be authentic.

The fraud was discovered the next day after the genuine supplier said it had not changed its bank account.

The fraudulent funds were eventually traced and fully recovered after a report was made.

This was after the Singapore police immediately engaged with the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Interior and Dubai police to facilitate liaison with Omani authorities.

What is FRONTIER+?

FRONTIER+ is a cross-border anti-scam collaboration platform involving anti-scam centres representatives from 14 law enforcement agencies.

More than 3,200 officers from Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Maldives, Thailand, Macau, Indonesia, Brunei and Canada were deployed in the two-month operation FRONTIER+ III.

A total of 3,018 people, aged between 13 and 85, were arrested, and 7,553 people linked to over 138,000 scam cases are being investigated.

About US$752 million (S$962 million) in losses was involved.

Nearly 102,000 bank accounts were frozen.

More than US$161 million (S$206 million) in illicit funds were seized.

The Singapore police arrested over 130 people in Singapore and more than 1,000 are being investigated.

These individuals were linked to more than 3,000 scam cases involving nearly S$70 million in losses.

Police also froze 2,315 bank accounts and seized about S$35 million.