DBS staff, police stop 2 victims from losing $820k to government official impersonation scams, Singapore News
DBS staff helped an elderly woman from being scammed twice and referred the case to the police.
The police said in a news release on Thursday (May 29) that the 77-year-old woman had tried withdrawing $200,000 in cash at DBS' Holland Village branch on April 2.
When asked about the transaction, she said the money was for her nephew's wedding, even though she had already withdrawn $160,000 the day before.
Suspicious, the staff referred her to the DBS Bank Anti-Scam team, who sought assistance from the police's Anti-Scam Centre (ASC).
ACS officers engaged the elderly woman and learnt that she had been contacted by an unknown caller claiming to be "telecommunications company staff' who transferred her to scammers posing as the "Hong Kong police" and "staff" from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The "Hong Kong police" had told the victim that she was under investigation for money laundering and instructed her to withdraw $620,000 and hand it over to the "MAS staff" for investigation.
Thanks to DBS' escalation of the case and intervention by ASC, the woman was prevented from losing $620,000. Suspicious activities detected in scammers' bank account
In a separate government official impersonation scam case, the police said a 44-year-old man had been contacted by a caller claiming to be a "Citibank staff" on April 2 and told him that a credit card that he applied for was used to purchase cryptocurrency.
When the man denied applying for the credit card, the "Citibank staff" referred him to a scammer impersonating a "MAS staff".
The "MAS staff" then told the man that he was under investigation for money laundering and needed to transfer $200,000 to a DBS bank account provided by the scammer for investigation purposes.
The man was also asked by the scammer to share his screen via WhatsApp while making the transfer.
Fortunately, the transfer was intercepted by DBS' Anti-Mule Team, which detected suspicious activities in the scammers' bank account because of anti-scam measures implemented by ASC and the Singpass Anti-Fraud Team.
The police advised the public to take precautions to avoid falling for scams by using the ACT (Add, Check, Tell) framework.
This involves adding the ScamShield app and setting security features like banking transaction limits.
The public can also call the ScamShield helpline at 1799 for more information on scams and check the legitimacy of suspicious messages, phone numbers and website links via the ScamShield app or website.
[[nid:718334]]
lim.kewei@asiaone.com
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