How a retiree lost $200k to scammers who posed as cops

Such scams show how financial crimes are evolving all the time

- Tan Ooi Boon

A retiree, seemingly well up on the ways of the world, still ended up losing $200,000 to scammers who posed as foreign cops and maliciously preyed on her illogical fear of being convicted of a "crime" overseas.

Illogical might be too kind a word: The 70-year-old might not even have visited that country then, but she was so fearful of getting a criminal conviction for misusing her credit card there that she transferred the $200,000 to the "police" for safe-keeping, though no government would offer such a service.

As scams go, it was one of the more brazen and improbable, but it also shows that if a smart person can still fall for such a ridiculous ploy, efforts to educate the public on scams continue to fall on many deaf ears.

Around 46,000 scam cases were reported in Singapore in 2023 and there is no sign that the situation has improved, given there was already a record high of 26,587 incidents reported in the first half of 2024.

A plausible reason why such preventable crimes still can snare so many victims is that many people have largely stopped reading the news and important government broadcasts, because they prefer to spend their time looking at entertainment-based content on social media.

How else can one explain why even seemingly educated people continue to fall for the same old tricks that various authorities have warned us about hundreds, possibly thousands, of times?

For instance, the widely reported investigation scams often bear the tell-tale sign of "foreign officials" calling victims in Singapore directly, though in reality, such calls would not happen because overseas agencies have no power to investigate people here.

Moreover, the Singapore police have repeatedly said the business of policing would never be conducted over the phone or on social media platforms. So the police will never call you to verify personal or banking details, let alone ask you to transfer money.