SINGAPORE: The Singapore Police Force warned the public on Tuesday (Feb 25) that scams and cybercrime continued to be a pressing concern last year, saying that the total amount lost to scams was at least $1.1 billion.
There was an almost 11 per cent increase in scam cases in Singapore, rising from 50,376 in 2023 to 55,810 in 2024. The money lost in scams, however, surged by 70.6 per cent, reaching over a billion dollars, up from at least $651.8 million in 2023.
“The increase in the total amount lost was driven by a small number of cases with very high losses (for example, four cases accounted for $237.9 million in losses),” SPF noted.
The Anti-Scam Command (ASCom) was able to recover more than $182 million of scam losses last year, reducing the net scam losses to about $930 million. Additionally, the ASCom and its partners successfully averted $483 million of potential losses.
Interestingly, SPF noted that nearly 71 per cent of scam victims were youths, young adults, and adults under the age of 50. Nevertheless, while there were fewer scam victims among the elderly, they lost the highest average amount per victim among the various age groups.
The police also said that the number of e-commerce scams, phishing scams, investment scams, and government official impersonation scams increased last year. On the other hand, fake friend call scams, malware-enabled scams, and social media impersonation scams decreased, in large part due to measures implemented by the government and stakeholders such as banks and telcos.
However, self-effected scams remain a concern, accounting for 82.4 per cent of total reported scam cases last year. These cases involve scammers manipulating victims into performing the monetary transactions themselves through deception and social engineering rather than directly gaining control of the victims’ accounts.
“The Police will continue to fight scams through a range of measures, including tapping on legislative levers and conducting enforcement operations.
“Such measures include tapping on legislative levers such as the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (CDSA) and the Computer Misuse Act (CMA),” SPF added.
Last year, ASCom, along with the Scam Strike Teams in the seven Police Land Divisions, conducted 25 anti-scam enforcement operations throughout Singapore. This led to the investigation of more than 8,000 money mules and scammers. The police also charged over 660 scammers and money mules in court, including more than 110 of them under the new laws of the CDSA and CMA.
The featured image above is from the Singapore Police Force. /TISG
Read also: At least S$231,000 lost to scammers impersonating PDPC officers in Singapore