Man arrested for suspected involvement in government official impersonation scam
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The suspect was found with a cash cheque and two unknown Malaysian UOB ATM cards.
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SINGAPORE – A 44-year-old Malaysian man was arrested for his alleged involvement in a case of government official impersonation scam here amounting to $180,000, the police said on Aug 31.
The police responded to a call for assistance at about 12.30pm on Aug 30 from UOB regarding a suspicious over-the-counter cash cheque withdrawal request by a man at one of its branches.
With follow-up investigations and collaboration with bank staff, officers from the Anti-Scam Command and Central Police Division established the man’s identity and arrested him.
Preliminary investigations showed that the man had allegedly tried to facilitate cash cheque encashments totalling $180,000. The cheque was linked to a report about the impersonation of a government official supposedly from the Ministry of Law.
On Aug 29, a 65-year-old victim was allegedly told that she had been implicated in a case of money laundering and she had to transfer all her funds from various bank accounts to her UOB account for “investigation purposes”.
She was also allegedly told that the money will be returned to her once investigations were over.
The woman complied with the scammers’ instructions and transferred around $40,000 to an unknown OCBC account and allegedly handed over five pre-signed blank cheques to an unknown person posing as an investigations officer on Aug 30 near her home.
Police said the 44-year-old man had been instructed by a scam syndicate to receive one of the victim’s pre-signed cheques from an unknown person and later encash the cheque at UOB Raffles Place.
During the arrest, the man was found with a cash cheque and two unknown Malaysian UOB ATM cards.
The man was said to have been allegedly recruited by an overseas scam syndicate a few days earlier to collect and deliver cash in Singapore.
He is expected to be charged in court with abetment by conspiracy to fraudulently use as genuine a forged document purported to be a valuable security and fraudulent possession on Sept 1.
The first offence carries a jail term of up to 15 years and a fine, while the second carries a jail term up to a year and a fine up to $3,000, or both.
Midyear scam statistics on Aug 30 by the police showed that close to half a billion dollars was lost to scams in the first half of 2025
The $456.4 million lost between January and June 2025 was a drop from the $522.4 million lost during the same period in 2024.
The report showed that government official impersonation scams remain an area of concern, with the number of cases almost tripling from 589 in the first half of 2024 to 1,762 in the first half of 2025.
Such scams also saw the second-highest losses among all scam types, with $126.5 million lost. This was an 88 per cent increase from the $67.2 million lost during the same period in 2024.
The police reminded the public that those who are involved in scams will be dealt with in accordance with the law.
They added that government officials will not require members of the public to disclose personal information over phone calls, or ask them to transfer money. Government officials will also not transfer calls to the police or ask the public to install applications from unofficial app stores.
For more information on scams, visit www.scamshield.gov.sg
