SINGAPORE - Police have partnered with four banks over 15 weeks to prevent more than 15,000 scam victims from losing over $69.43 million.

The police’s Anti-Scam Centre (ASC), together with DBS Bank, UOB, OCBC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, employed robotic process automation (RPA) technology to identify job, investment and other scam victims. RPA uses bots or artificial intelligence to learn and then replicate repetitive tasks.

From Sept 16 to Dec 31, 2023, the police and the banks issued more than 48,000 SMSes to the victims, who are customers of the four banks, interrupting over 5,300 scams in progress.

“RPA technology has enabled the police to automate information sharing, information processing, and the mass distribution of SMS alerts,” the police said on Jan 9.

“The collaboration between the police and partnering banks has also significantly improved their outreach to promptly alert a larger number of victims within a short period of time and prevent further losses.”

Many victims realised they had been scammed only after they received the SMSes, which advised them to stop any further monetary transactions.

Separately, the police worked with Great Eastern and OCBC on Dec 19, 2023, to prevent losses of more than $250,000 in a government official impersonation scam case.

The victim, aged 67, had received a call on Dec 2 from someone who pretended to be a government official from China. The scammer alleged that the victim had suspicious funds in a Chinese bank account registered in her name, and accused the victim of committing a crime, the police said.

The scammer then transferred the call to a second scammer, who impersonated another Chinese government official.

On Dec 13, on the second scammer’s instructions, the victim opened a UOB bank account in her name, supposedly to assist in the investigations. She then provided the Internet banking credentials of the new account to the scammer.

The victim was told to withdraw all the money from her other bank accounts and liquidate her insurance policies, and deposit all the money into the new UOB account.

On Dec 18, the victim went to Great Eastern in Jurong East – on the second scammer’s instructions – to liquidate her insurance policies. This was detected by a Great Eastern customer service officer, who found the situation suspicious.

The victim claimed that the money was for the purchase of a house and renovation fees, but was unable to provide more details when probed further. Despite having to make a loss on the early surrender of four insurance policies, she insisted on proceeding with the matter.

This made the Great Eastern customer service officer even more suspicious. The officer informed OCBC, as the monies from the insurance policies would have been deposited into the victim’s account with the bank. OCBC then contacted ASC for assistance.

ASC partnered with OCBC to prevent the victim from making any further transactions. ASC officers also visited the victim at her residence and convinced her that she had fallen for a scam.

ASC also acted on the UOB account, which was under the control of the second scammer.

Mr Beaver Chua, OCBC’s head of anti-fraud, group financial crime compliance, said: “Fighting scams truly is a community effort. We are heartened at how OCBC and GE worked as ‘One Group’ to swiftly identify the scam, alert the authorities, and work closely with them to prevent our customer from losing her hard-earned monies and incurring a loss on the early redemption of her insurance policies.”

Great Eastern is a subsidiary of OCBC.

The police encouraged the public to protect themselves against scams by adding security features on their electronic devices and banking apps, checking for signs of scams, and telling the authorities and others about any ongoing scams.

“If it is too good to be true, it is probably untrue, and a scam,” the police said.

For more information on scams, the public can visit www.scamalert.sg or contact the Anti-Scam Hotline on 1800-722-6688. To report scam-related information, individuals can call the police hotline on 1800-255-0000 or submit details online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness, with the assurance of confidentiality.