Couple get credit cards cancelled by identity thieves during holiday

Banks blocked their accounts at request of impersonator who initially failed verification process

- Joyce Lim

Singaporean Melvin Chan's recent holiday to Japan with his wife turned into a nightmare after he found their bank accounts blocked and credit cards cancelled by identity thieves who rang up the banks and pretended to be them.

Mr Chan, 35, and his wife were at the Tokyo DisneySea theme park on Oct 7 when they realised that none of their cards was working.

"DisneySea is a cashless attraction. Almost everything there requires you to pay with card - from restaurants to the express passes for the rides. I think maybe only the souvenir shops accepted cash payment," said Mr Chan.

The couple spent three hours calling DBS Bank, UOB and OCBC Bank from the theme park and would later find out that their cards had been cancelled by someone who called the banks.

The person, who posed as Mr Chan, asked the banks to do so on the pretext that he had lost his belongings.

"We were shocked to find that all my credit cards were cancelled and our bank accounts were blocked. The bank officers told us that we would need to be back in Singapore to reinstate them," said Mr Chan, who has reported the matter to the police.

"My wife is Thai... so we transferred money from her bank account in Thailand to my YouTrip travel card. She has limited funds in that account and we carried on the rest of the trip with limited funds."

The police confirmed that the reports were made and are looking into the matter.

Mr Chan added that he did not lose any money from his accounts when this happened. But this incident surfaced as banks face increasing pressure to safeguard customer funds from scams and fraud.