Woman trying to withdraw $40k for ‘son’s renovation’ saved by bank

DBS branch staff spent over an hour to convince her that she was being scammed

- Nadine Chua

Just as the bank was about to close for the day on Oct 16, a woman in her 70s rushed in, frantically asking for help to withdraw $40,000 in cash from her savings account.

Seeing this was almost all of her life savings, Ms Karen Teo, a bank officer at DBS’ South Bridge Road branch, asked the woman what it was for.

Ms Teo said: “The customer claimed the money was for her son’s renovation. She kept telling me, ‘Quickly get the money. Someone is waiting for me.’”

Seeing how frazzled she was, Ms Teo offered to call her son to confirm that the money would be used for renovating his home.

That was when the woman’s story kept changing, which told Ms Teo that she was dealing with a scam victim.

First, the woman said her son was overseas and would not answer the phone. Then, she said it was actually her godson she was helping. A while later, she claimed it was a boy at a temple who needed the money.

Ms Teo called her supervisor, Ms Low Bee Peng, and they spent more than an hour convincing the woman that she was being scammed. She decided not to withdraw any money. It was after 5pm, more than an hour after the bank had closed.

Ms Low said: “She later admitted she had received a call claiming she had bought an insurance policy. The ‘insurance agent’ then connected her to a man posing as a government official, who sent her a photo of a court order threatening that her assets would be seized if she did not do as she was told.”

The grammatically poor phrase “for office use only” in big, bold letters proved it was a fake court order.