Tech is making scams more of a problem

I am a scam victim and lost thousands of dollars recently. The scammer used WeChat, and the scheme apparently involved retailing fake, unregulated and unlicensed investments.

Criminal as this was, it is also an affront to the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s governing regime, which oversees probity in our banking and financial system.

It came to be disclosed later that there were more victims — more evidence that criminals are using technology and mobile devices to bamboozle victims and leave them in grief (WeChat scammers cheat victims of more than S$70,000; March 7, online).

The modus operandi involved getting a victim’s personal particulars and bank account details. When the time came to deliver on the investment, the scammer would equivocate and try every kind of trickery to stir up confusion.

Those are signature scam tactics, but the use of technological devices has now become scammers’ stock-in-trade, and what is worse and confounding, as proven by recent cyberattacks, is the difficulty of apprehending them.