SINGAPORE - The Government is doubling down on efforts to stop scams here, said Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam on Sunday (Feb 27).
He added that the police are working to stop the illicit transactions, but the challenge remains difficult with money moving beyond the borders of Singapore.
This comes after the police said earlier this month that victims here lost at least $633.3 million last year, almost 2.5 times the $268.4 million stolen by scammers in 2020.
"We are redoubling our efforts. The police are taking on more powers to stop certain types of transactions but you know, the multiplicity of transactions and the digitisation mean that the challenge grows exponentially," said Mr Shanmugam during an event at the Sri Siva-Krishna Temple in Marsiling.
One of the challenges that the authorities face is recovering the money lost to scammers, especially if those behind the ruse are outside Singapore.
"Most often these (scammers) come from overseas. And once the money goes out, how are you going to recover it? It's rerouted so many times to different jurisdictions... We have to get people to understand this and telcos, banks, everyone has got to come together and work fast and work effectively," he noted.
"It's a great challenge, I will say."
To help mitigate victims' losses, among other things, the police in 2019 set up the Anti-Scam Centre to centralise investigations into scam-related crimes.
It was reported earlier this year that working with other stakeholders like banks, the police retrieved more than $160 million of the $700 million scammers took from victims here. They also froze more than 24,000 bank accounts believed to have been used by scammers.
But the best way to combat scams is to stop them from happening, said Mr Shanmugam.
He listed ScamShield - a mobile app that filters out scam messages using artificial intelligence and blocks calls from phone numbers that were used in other scam cases or reported by ScamShield users - and anti-scam campaigns as examples.
"A very substantial number of scams were prevented from taking place through all these efforts," he added.
Those with information relating to such crimes can call the police hotline on 1800-255-0000, or go to this website.
