Forum: Almost a victim of same scam tactics as those in $1.19m case
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Recently, I almost fell prey to scammers in a similar situation as that described by “Grace” (‘ I don’t want to know how much I’ve lost’: Scam victim who transferred $1.19m to syndicate
A call from a so-called anti-scam centre informed me that my identity was being used to register an iPhone for illegal purposes and crimes committed.
Then came a follow-up call from a “police inspector” purporting to assist in investigations, requiring me to furnish all personal banking details and instructing me to make four “check-in” calls daily to him to report my whereabouts.
It was fortunate that a family member suspected me of being on a scam call after noticing me spending more than an hour on the phone in a locked room.
It then struck me to verify the callers’ identity by calling them back. True enough, there were no answers to my calls. I immediately reported the incident to the relevant authority.
As Grace shared, we are law-abiding individuals who became concerned about the severity of the alleged crimes described by the scammers. The scammers had first said my iPhone was used to market illegal financial products, and later that commission money from a fraud committed by a bank officer had been paid to my account. As a result, I lost my ability to judge things properly.
From the dates of Grace’s incident and mine recently, it seems that the gang may still be operating in Singapore, using the same tactics and combination of different iPhone numbers with and without the +65 prefix, to avoid detection.
I hope the culprits can be caught soon to save innocent individuals from such financial plight.
Ong Kim Bock
