SINGAPORE: At least 460 victims have fallen prey to investment and job scams since January this year, with losses amounting to at least S$6.8 million (US$5 million).
The victims were added by people they do not know into chat groups and channels on messaging platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp, police said in a news release on Wednesday (Feb 14).
These chat groups and channels purportedly offer special investment or job opportunities.
“This is a common approach modus operandi exploited by scammers behind investment scams and job scams,” police added.
The police advised the public to be cautious when they are added by unknown people into such chat groups or channels.
The public is encouraged to activate the privacy function on their devices which disallows unknown users from adding them into chat groups or channels, police added.
INVESTMENT SCAMS
To lure victims into believing that profits from these “investments” are authentic, scammers in these chat groups or channels will feature testimonials from other members claiming to have profited from various investment mechanisms.
Victims tempted by the attractive opportunities then contacted the scammers and were offered “investment packages”, police said.
They were then prompted to provide their personal information “to set up accounts” and instructed to transfer their money to specified PayNow numbers, bank accounts, or cryptocurrency wallets as part of the “investment”.
When setting up these accounts, victims may be instructed to download Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications to access the “investment” websites.
“These are instead scam websites used to reinforce the deceit,” police said.
Before receiving earnings from their “investments”, victims were asked to transfer increasingly large sums for fees incurred for the “investment”.
They would only realise they had been scammed when they were unable to withdraw their earnings despite the fees transferred to the scammers.