Scammers’ best weapon: We are all human

What can be done about scams – if anything, besides the usual anti-scam publicity and education? They will always exist. You can’t erase them because we are all human beings. But you can step in to help people who want to be helped – or even stop the scam within the limits of the law.

All this provided the scams are detected in time; otherwise, as they say, another one bites the dust, sadly. I have had at least two brushes with scams long before the internet became the happy hunting ground for scammers.

In 2000, I went to open up an account for my CPF savings, which I had just withdrawn at my retirement age.

The bank officer dealing with my account took the chance to pitch a so-called special investment fund to me. You wouldn’t lose a cent, she said. In fact, the fund would very likely turn in a 15-20 per cent profit in 10 years. The minimum investment participation fund was $20K.

Ten years later, the $20K shrank to $18K. I not only lost $2K plus interest but also opportunity cost if that sum had been used for some other investment.

That was a scam. I bought the fund in an unguarded moment.

Another time, I was scammed by someone I thought was a friend. To cut the story short, he asked me to help launch a regional agriculture magazine in Kuala Lumpur.

I would stay in his apartment there and be paid RM10K a month. I would have my office. I visited his company to do some due diligence. There was an office, and he had some staff. I thought I had nothing to lose. So I took up the offer.

Then came the con or scam. He said he needed a Sing$45K personal loan to clear something while expecting RM500K in a few days as funding for the magazine as well as his salary as chairman. The $45K was for just a few days.

It took me two years to get back that money. That distracted me from other activities and was a waste of my time. But luckily, I managed to force him to repay me. He did it bit by bit.

On the bright side, the whole experience was rather enriching in the sense that I ended up knowing Kuala Lumpur quite well. I made some Malaysian friends and learnt how Malaysians did their business – seldom in their offices but mostly in hotel lounges and restaurants.

Two other scam victims in Singapore were not so fortunate.

One scam victim was a common enough case of a lonely Pioneer Singaporean seeking love in his sunset years. In itself, what was wrong with that? If you are single, you are free to do what you want. But only if what you seem to be doing makes sense.

A Pioneer Singaporean friend said he and some other schoolmates were worried about a friend who met a lady from Shanghai working in Singapore. He had been to her home in China, where she wanted to buy an apartment, which would be their matrimonial home.

The house was said to cost $350K. He handed the whole sum to her, with the project in an early stage. But not before visiting the site where the apartment was supposed to be.

After that, she went missing. For a so-called man of the world, he did not think it strange that one would have to cough out the whole sum for the flat and not acquire it through progressive payments until the flat’s completion. And he was from Singapore, where he would be more than familiar with how financing for apartments and HDB flats was done.

Finally, we come to what I would describe as a peculiar but sad case.

Scammers contacted a woman in Singapore that she was being investigated for money laundering. They claimed to be a police investigator, public prosecutor or a bank officer.

She was instructed to key in some numbers for them to check and clear her. These five-digit numbers turned out to be the money amounts she was transferring to the scammers.

She parted with $1.9 million. It could be more because she said she lost count and did not want to know the exact amount.

One of the biggest weapons scammers use is fear. FOMO – fear of missing an opportunity. Fear of being punished. And fear for someone close to you. Add to these good old greed. These weapons are timeless.

Tan Bah Bah is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also a managing editor of a magazine publishing company