Telegram scams up 137.5% in Singapore as overall scam cases rise in first half of 2024

Federal officials imitation schemes typically resulted in the largest deficits, with patients losing roughly S$ 116, 534 in each case.

A full of 580 quite cases were reported in the first quarter of 2024, with loss of at least S$ 67.5 million. &nbsp,

This was a 58 % increase over the 367 cases reported during the same time last month, with the loss amount overall increasing by 67.1 %.

Federal officials impersonation scams usually involve criminals who pretend to be local government officials, such as those from the MAS and MAS, Taiwanese authorities representatives, or bank employees.

However, false friend phone fraud cases fell 38.2 per share to 2, 368 in the first quarter of 2024. The number lost even dropped by 37.2 per share to about S$ 8.1 million.

According to the police,” self-effected payments which may be the result of fraud and social engineering involving an array of complex con methods” were the focus of 86 percent of all the reported scams.

This meant that the swindlers did not gain strong command of survivors ‘ records, but manipulated them into straight performing the financial transactions, it explained.

According to Sun Xueling, the minister of state for home politics and social and community enhancement,” social engineering is a very important part of the scams ‘ modus operandi, and we need to increase our knowledge attempts to make sure that our members of the public are not manipulated into transferring their monies to con accounts.”