SINGAPORE: The police might have the authority to halt such transfers if potential scam victims refuse to accept that they have been targeted and continue to insist on sending money away.
New legislation has been proposed to allow the police to order banks to restrict a potential scam victim’s banking transactions, including online banking, PayNow and automated teller machine ( ATM) facilities.
According to a press release released on Monday ( Nov 11 ), the police can better defend targets who do n’t believe they are being defrauded.
Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development, Sun Xueling, had previously introduced the Protection from Scams Bill to congress.
In some con cases, the subjects had been told by the police, businesses or family members that they were being scammed, but nevertheless proceeded with the cash payments, explained MHA.
The government claimed that the police lack the authority to stop victims from giving their money to scammers if they so choose to do so.
This time, MHA held a public discussion on the Bill through the REACH webpage from August 30 to September 30. Additionally, it had discussions with people from different ages in target organizations.
” General, respondents were friendly of the Bill and provided their ideas and opinions on the ideas, which we have taken on board where appropriate”, said MHA.
SELF-EFFECTED Swaps
Despite safeguards and broad public education efforts, MHA noted that there are still many fraud cases in Singapore and related to the voluntary transfer of funds by the sufferer to the perpetrator.  ,
In the first quarter of this year, 86 per share of reported schemes resulted from self-effected payments.
” The swindlers did not gain strong power of the victims ‘ accounts, but manipulated the sufferers into transferring their cash to the swindlers”, MHA explained.
If there is a good reason for believing that someone will transfer money to a scam, officers will be able to challenge restriction orders to banks.
It will involve the seven Domestic Systemically Important Banks ( DSIB ) here — DBS, OCBC, UOB, Citibank, HSBC, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank— which manage most of the consumer deposits in Singapore.