Scammers use trojan horse virus to dupe 79-year-old SG man of RM605,000 of life savings

The man’s access to his laptop was supposedly blocked for ‘security reasons’ and he was required to call a support hotline number listed on the alert. — Photo: ST reader/ANN

SINGAPORE: Right after booting up his desktop computer, a 79-year-old man received a supposed anti-virus pop-up notification alerting him that access to his device had been blocked.

Not knowing that it was a ploy by scammers, Tan (not his real name) called the number listed on the alert to get help. He ended up losing S$173,000 (RM605,410).