Scam victims in S'pore lost record $1.1 billion in a year

High of 51,501 cases reported in 2024, with e-commerce ruses the most common

- Nadine Chua

Scam victims in Singapore lost $1.1 billion in 2024, marking a record high amount of losses suffered in a single year.

Almost 25 per cent of this involved cryptocurrency, a surge from 6.8 per cent of total losses in 2023.

Overall, the amount lost to scams in 2024 is around 70 per cent higher than the $651.8 million that scammers took in 2023, police said in releasing the annual scam figures on Feb 25.

In total, victims in Singapore have lost more than $3.4 billion to scams since 2019.

Police saw the highest number of scam reports ever in 2024, with 51,501 cases recorded compared with 46,563 cases the previous year.

Over 70 per cent of these cases involved less than $5,000 in losses each. Police said the median loss per case is around $1,300.

The most common ruse in 2024 was e-commerce scams, with 11,665 reported cases and victims losing at least $17.5 million in total.

Around one in two of these victims was aged between 30 and 49.

Police said the concert ticket ruse contributed to the majority of e-commerce cases.

In such a ruse, victims are fooled into believing that they have paid for tickets, which are then not delivered or discovered to be fake.

In March 2024, The Straits Times reported that at least 960 victims lost over $538,000 in just 10 weeks to Taylor Swift concert ticket scams.

Job scams continued to be among the top scams of concern in 2024, although there was a dip in the number of cases reported. In total, victims reported more than 9,000 cases and lost $156.2 million.

Phishing scams rounded off the top three scams of concern in 2024 with $59.4 million lost, more than four times the amount lost the year before.