77-year-old woman loses $150,000 to scammers claiming to be from ‘China Interpol’

An elderly woman was afraid she would lose her life savings when a scammer who pretended to be from “China Interpol” said her accounts would be frozen due to suspicion that she was part of a money laundering scheme.

After the scammers offered to hold on to the money for her for safekeeping, the 77-year-old retiree withdrew $150,000 and placed it in an envelope the scammers sent her. Following the instructions in a phone call from the man from “China Interpol,” she then put it between the front door and gate of her house. Within a few minutes, while she was still on the phone with the man from “China Interpol,” the money was taken, Shin Min Daily News reported on Sunday (June 19).

Back in April, the woman took a call from someone who said they were from the Central Provident Fund (CPF). She was then transferred to “Captain Chen” from China Interpol.

This man told her that she and thirty other people were part of a money laundering operation and that their accounts would be frozen.

The retiree told Shin Min Daily News, “They asked me many questions, including my full name in English, my NRIC number, my address, and the amount of money I had in my bank accounts.”

The man from “China Interpol” then said that he could safekeep her money for her, telling her that if she gave it to him, he would return it in three months.

However, he swore her to complete secrecy. If she told anyone in her family, he said, they would be implicated.

Between June 7 and 8, the woman took $50,000 each from her three accounts.

Had she listened to a bank staffer who warned her after noting the high amount she was withdrawing, she would have been spared the scam.

The staffer told her that she needed to be careful of being victimised. But the scammers had foreseen this and told her to say that the money was for home renovations.

At one point, her younger sister also heard that she was on her way to the bank and called to ask why. But because the scammers had planted the fear in her that anyone she told would be implicated, she merely told her sister to mind her own business.

Meanwhile, the scammers sent her an envelope with a Singapore-China joint statement” as well as a police stamp. On June 10, she got on the phone with the scammers again, who told her to leave the money in the envelope outside her house. 

“I put the money outside and kept on talking to them on the phone. Less than five minutes into the call, I opened the door and saw that the envelope had been taken away.”

When several days passed, and she was no longer getting phone calls from the scammers, she suspected that something was wrong.

A person from the senior activity centre she went to regularly then helped her lodge a police report. /TISG

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