Singaporeans suffer record 822 million USD in scam losses
E-commerce scams were the top scam type flagged by the Singaporean police, followed by job scams, phishing scams, investment scams and fake friend call scams.
Hanoi (VNA) - At least 1.1 billion SDG (822 million USD) was lost to scams in 2024, with cryptocurrency-related scams accounting for nearly 25% of the total, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) reported on February 25.
E-commerce scams were the top scam type flagged by the police, followed by job scams, phishing scams, investment scams and fake friend call scams.
Cryptocurrency losses made up a larger percentage of scam losses last year, accounting for about 24.3% of total scam losses. Meanwhile, fraud through e-commerce transactions was the most common type with 11,665 cases, causing losses of 17.5 million SDG.
The total number of scam cases also increased by 10.6% to 51,501 cases in 2024, the SPF’s report said.
Statistics showed that although people aged 65 and over accounted for only 8.4% of total victims, they had the highest average loss of all age groups.
SPF noted that its Anti-Scam Command, which was set up in March 2022, managed to recover more than 182 million USD of scam losses in 2024.
🌳 To combat rising fraud, the Southeast Asian nation’s parliament passed the the Protection from Scams Act in January, which provides the police with powers to issue a restriction order to banks to restrict the banking transactions of an individual if there is reason to believe that the person is likely to make money transfers to a scammer./.
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