Ministerial statement: Desmond Tan on strengthening enforcement and public education to tackle scams
About S$2 million in victims’ money has been recovered from the OCBC phishing scam, with 121 local bank accounts frozen. Another S$2.2 million has been traced to 89 overseas bank accounts. These updates were given by Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan in Parliament on Tuesday (Feb 15). Overall, there has been a big rise in the number of scams reported in Singapore. The figure was 23,931 in 2021, of which 5,020 were phishing cases. That was a more than four-fold increase from 2017 and in that year, only 16 were phishing cases, none of which involved SMSes impersonating banks. Mr Tan noted that police resources are stretched, but the force will form an Anti-Scam Command this year to consolidate expertise, improve coordination of enforcement and investigations, and oversee newly formed Scam Strike Teams. Targeted public education efforts are also being scaled up. Mr Tan urged the public to download ScamShield to filter out scam messages and block scam calls.
About S$2 million in victims’ money has been recovered from the OCBC phishing scam, with 121 local bank accounts frozen. Another S$2.2 million has been traced to 89 overseas bank accounts. These updates were given by Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan in Parliament on Tuesday (Feb 15). Overall, there has been a big rise in the number of scams reported in Singapore. The figure was 23,931 in 2021, of which 5,020 were phishing cases. That was a more than four-fold increase from 2017 and in that year, only 16 were phishing cases, none of which involved SMSes impersonating banks. Mr Tan noted that police resources are stretched, but the force will form an Anti-Scam Command this year to consolidate expertise, improve coordination of enforcement and investigations, and oversee newly formed Scam Strike Teams. Targeted public education efforts are also being scaled up. Mr Tan urged the public to download ScamShield to filter out scam messages and block scam calls.
Popular Shows
