Telegram scams up 137.5% in Singapore as overall scam cases rise in first half of 2024

SINGAPORE: More people are falling victim to scams on Telegram, with a 137.5 per cent increase in cases in the first half of this year, the police said on Thursday (Aug 22).
Investment scams were the most common type of scam, accounting for 38.6 per cent of cases. The rest were mainly e-commerce and job scams. 
The Singapore Police Force (SPF) also highlighted three products from tech giant Meta – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – as being “particularly concerning”.
These platforms are consistently over-represented among those exploited by scammers to contact potential victims and carry out their scams, it said.
Overall, scam cases in Singapore between January and June rose 16.3 per cent compared with the same period last year. A total of 26,587 cases were reported, with at least S$385.6 million (US$295 million) lost – a 24.6 per cent increase.
The majority of scam victims – 74.2 per cent – were youths, young adults and adults under the age of 50.
However, the average amount lost per elderly victim was the highest among the age groups.
“This is a concern as the elderly may potentially lose their entire life savings to scams and are unlikely to recover financially,” the police said.
The average amount lost in each scam was S$14,503, an increase of 7.1 per cent from last year, according to the police.
E-commerce scams, job scams and phishing scams were the most common scams in the first half of 2024.
However, in terms of the total amount lost, investment scams, job scams and government officials impersonation scams made up the top three.
Government officials impersonation scams caused the highest losses on average, with victims losing about S$116,534 in each case.
A total of 580 such cases were reported in the first half of 2024, with losses of at least S$67.5 million. 
This was a 58 per cent increase from the 367 cases in the same period last year, with the total amount lost rising even more – by 67.1 per cent.
Government officials impersonation scams typically involve criminals posing as local government officers, such as those from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), representatives of Chinese authorities or bank employees.
Meanwhile, fake friend call scam cases fell 38.2 per cent to 2,368 in the first half of 2024. The amount lost also dropped by 37.2 per cent to about S$8.1 million.
The police said 86 per cent of all the reported scams mostly involved “self-effected transfers which may be a result of deception and social engineering involving an array of complex scam methods”.
This meant that the scammers did not gain direct control of victims’ accounts, but manipulated them into directly performing the monetary transactions, it explained.
Minister of State for Home Affairs and for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said: “This goes to show that social engineering is a very important part of the scams’ modus operandi, and we need to increase our education efforts to inform our members of the public so that they are not manipulated into transferring their monies to scam accounts.”
SPF said it collaborates with e-commerce platforms to take down scam-related online accounts and advertisements. It also works with local telecommunication firms to terminate phone lines related to scams.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (AC) Aileen Yap, assistant director of the police’s Anti-Scam Command, said the number of malware-enabled scam cases and the amount lost to them have “decreased significantly”.
“This can be attributed to the intensive enforcement actions by the police, close collaboration by the police and MAS with the banks to implement anti-malware measures for banking apps, and the enhanced protection feature for Android phones by Cyber Security Agency and Google,” she said.
Over S$204 million of potential losses were prevented in the first half of this year, through efforts to proactively alert scam victims, said AC Yap.
The police also work closely with their foreign counterparts, such as the Royal Malaysia Police and Interpol, to share information and conduct joint investigations and operations against transnational scams.
This is crucial as most online scams are perpetrated by scammers based outside Singapore, so such cases are difficult to investigate and prosecute, they said.
Such combined efforts in the first half of 2024 saw the arrests of over 100 people based overseas who were responsible for more than 320 transnational scam cases.
SPF also said that the ScamShield mobile app, launched in November 2020, will be enhanced.
One new feature would let users upload screenshots of content received on platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram. Using generative artificial intelligence and large language models, ScamShield will analyse the content and determine whether it is likely to be malicious or not.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is also studying measures to better protect scam victims, particularly those who do not believe that they are being scammed, said the police.
These could include victims of love scams or investment scams, who have invested so much emotionally or financially that they are unable to extricate themselves from their situations.
“Specifically, MHA is considering (empowering) police officers to restrict the banking transactions of scam victims and targets of ongoing scams, if there is reasonable belief that they will make money transfers to scammers,” said the police.
“The restriction will be time-limited, as the intent is to give the police time to convince the victims that they are being scammed.”
It added that MHA intends to conduct public consultations on the proposals, and will release more details at a later date.