Tuition centre staff asked by 'boss' on WhatsApp to transfer S$20,000, turns out to be scammers

An employee of a local tuition centre was the target of an impersonation scam, with the scammers posing as her boss and asking her to transfer S$20,000 to an account purportedly for business expansion purposes.

The scammers supposedly archived the chat between the employee and her boss and blocked the boss' contact on the employee's WhatsApp account.

Their chat with the employee also allegedly managed to contain the authentic chat history between the the boss and the employee.

Given the veneer of authenticity, the employee lowered her guard at first, but saw through the ruse eventually.

Asked to help transfer money for business purposes

Speaking to Mothership, Sandra Lim, founder of tuition centre, The Nuggets Academy, shared that her employee was first approached on Wednesday (Oct. 7) afternoon.

It started with a text message from the fake "Sandra", Lim recounted.

"Sandra" had apparently told the employee that she needed her to help make a transfer for business purposes.

"Sandra" also explained to the employee that it wasn't convenient for her to make the transfer under her own name, hence she needed the employee's help.

"So she thought it was a favour, and she was like, 'Yeah, sure, just send me the money and I'll make the transfer for you'," Lim shared.

"Sandra" then asked for the employee's account number and name, which the employee provided, still thinking she was chatting with Lim.

However, Lim said the employee had wondered at this point why she still needed to provide her bank details if the company's human resources department would have the information.

Pressure tactics

After receiving the employee's bank account details, "Sandra" sent the employee a screenshot of the transfer, claiming that S$20,000 had successfully been transferred to her account.

"Sandra" then requested the employee transfer the money to a MariBank account.

However, the employee told "Sandra" that the S$20,000 was not received.

According to screenshots shared with Mothership, "Sandra" started coming up with reasons to explain this, such as there being a delay due to a bank system upgrade.

"Sandra" then asked the employee how much she could transfer from her bank in the interim, to which the employee replied that she only remits money in ringgit, not Singapore dollars.

"Sandra" then asked how much she could transfer in ringgit.

The employee said she could transfer RM63,800, or about S$20,000.

"So the scammer was saying things like, 'Oh, but I need the transfer to be done urgently. Can you please do it now'," Lim said.

At one point, the fake "Sandra" asked the employee if she could borrow from her friends to transfer S$10,000 or S$5,000 for the time being.

It was at this point that the employee started becoming uncomfortable.

Chat history, blocked contact

According to Lim, the employee had not become suspicious as the chat with "Sandra" included their authentic chat history.

"Obviously, she wouldn't think it was someone else. It was our legit chat, right?" Lim remarked.

The employee then spoke to a friend, who pointed out that something was amiss.

"Her friend was like, 'Hey, how come your boss will ask you for money?'" Lim shared.

The employee then opened up the WhatsApp profile information of the person she was speaking to and discovered that the phone number had a country code of +91.

According to Lim, the employee investigated further and found that the chat between the two of them had been archived on her WhatsApp.

The employee also discovered that the contact of the real Lim had been blocked.

How

Till today, Lim said neither of them could figure out how the scammer managed to replicate the chat history or archive their chat remotely.

They have reported the scammer's number.

However, they've stopped short of making a police report since no money was lost.

Instead, Lim decided to share about the incident on social media to alert others about the scam.

Apart from serving as a cautionary tale, Lim is also hoping to tap on the wisdom of the online crowd to see if anyone could shed some light on how the scammer could have seemingly accessed either her or her employee's WhatsApp account.

This was the first time she's encountered a scam like that, she said.

Lim clarified that neither her nor the employee had recently changed their phone numbers.

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A post shared by Sandra Lim | Founder of The Nuggets Academy (@sandralim.sg)

More authentication layers activated to secure accounts

When asked if she has put in place additional safeguards to prevent a recurrence, Lim said that she's joked with her staff about using a "special password".

"Every time I start a conversation with her, I will say that secret word," Lim said of the idea.

On a serious note, Lim said they have changed their passwords and activated more authentication layers to secure their WhatsApp accounts