A WOMAN lost most of her savings after she believed a scammer’s lie that she had mistakenly bought insurance coverage from WeChat and paid S$67,500 (RM221,800), hoping to cancel the policy. Ironically, the policy was called “protection from scams insurance”.
Impersonating a WeChat employee, the scammer told the victim, 35, that she needed to make several transfers from her bank accounts to “authenticate” the cancellation of this policy.
Desperate to avoid paying premiums for something she did not remember applying for, she said she took out loans for tens of thousands of dollars to settle the cancellation.
The victim, who wanted to be known only as Ng, has made a police report. The police said investigations are ongoing.
Ng, a manager at a telecommunications firm, said the scammer called her in December 2024.
He told her that she had paid for the policy on WeChat using her Trust Bank card, which she had just linked to the WeChat app.
“The scammer sounded professional and could even list the banks I had accounts with. He said money would continue to be deducted from my card if I didn’t cancel the policy quickly. So I was quite anxious.”
Following the scammer’s instructions, Ng took out a S$27,800 (RM91,400) loan from her Trust Bank account and transferred the money to the scammer.
She said: “He kept saying it was just a ‘virtual loan’. So I thought it was virtual money and I wouldn’t get charged for it. I was so naive, it didn’t occur to me there would be actual money involved.”
Over the almost two-hour call with the scammer, Ng took out another loan of S$16,700 (RM54,900) to pay the scammer and transferred another S$23,000 (RM75,600) of her savings to an offshore account.
She realised she had been scammed only when she saw the S$23,000 deducted from her account.
Scam numbers hit record highs in the first half of 2024, with more than S$385.6mil (RM1.27bil) lost in 26,587 reported cases. Losses were almost 25% higher than the S$309.4mil recorded during the same period in 2023.
On Jan 9, 2025, the police said that between Aug 28, 2024, and the end of the year, at least 1,591 cases of impersonation scams featuring Chinese companies were reported, with total losses amounting to at least S$27.9mil (RM91.7mil).
On Jan 7, 2025, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling said that from January to September 2024, 86% of scams and 94% of scam losses involved victims willingly transferring money to scammers. — The Straits Times/ANN
