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Last year alone, about 350 victims were persuaded to hand over $4.6 million to phone cheats, say the police.
This year is turning out to be a good year for these fraudsters: In the first half of this year alone, takings by the cheats were almost as much as what they made in the whole of last year.
Between January and June, 253 victims lost more than $4.3 million, which works out to more than one unsuspecting person falling prey daily.
Most victims were duped by the lottery scam, in which victims are told that he or she has won a prize in a lottery held overseas, but that they have to make an 'advance payment' in order to claim the prize.
A variation: The prize is a luxury car, but an 'administrative fee' has to be remitted to collect it.
About 180 people were tricked into remitting a total of $2.4 million to these foreign con artists.
This type of scam pushed commercial crimes up 12 per cent to 1,769 cases in the first six months of this year.
While this scam is not new, the police note that the offer of the 'prize' is now coming via a text message instead of a phone call.
Two months ago, fraudsters impersonating officials from Malaysian oil company Petronas sent text messages to Singaporeans to inform them about their prize in a lucky draw and to ask them to call a number listed in the message.
Those who called back were greeted by someone with an Indonesian accent and asked to disclose their bank account numbers.
While this scam preyed on the potential victim's greed for a 'prize', another type of phone scam that surfaced last September played on their fear of authority.
Tricksters masquerading as officials from the Supreme Court or the police convinced more than 50 people that they were involved in court hearings or criminal cases, and that they needed to make cash transfers through remittance houses to exonerate themselves.
In recent months, scammers have tapped technology to make their con job more convincing: They have been able to rig it such that their intended victims see a number from the authorities on the caller ID, such as 999, 6338-1034, the Supreme Court hotline, or 6435-0000, the Criminal Investigation Department hotline.
A third type of scam preys on victims' family ties. Victims typically get a phone call informing them that a family member has been kidnapped and would be harmed if a ransom is not paid.
Sometimes, victims are told that their 'kidnapped' relative had defaulted on repayments for illegal loans or had stood as a guarantor for such loans.
About 20 victims lost $322,000 in the first half of this year to the kidnap scam, police said. Several people linked to phone scams were brought to justice recently.
Three months ago, a 36-year-old Taiwanese, Lee Chin Lung, was sent to jail for 18 months for his involvement in five kidnap scam cases involving 'ransoms' of more than $83,500.
He was not the mastermind but a conduit who was remitting their money to parties in China.
Another man, Ong Tian Soon, 28, was jailed a year in February for allowing his bank account to be used by a syndicate running a phone scam.
He was paid $150 a month for his account to be used - he was told - for collecting payment from punters placing illegal online bets on soccer games. The account was instead used to receive money from phone lottery scam victims.
At Ong's court hearing, police prosecutor Sheik Allaudeen noted that it was extremely difficult to catch offenders.
The masterminds in Lee and Ong's cases are still at large.
