The victims were told that they had to help e-commerce merchants improve their sales by buying items in advance, and would get refunds and commission fees later. This process of buying and refunding would be repeated several times, starting with low-cost items before moving to pricier ones.
The scammers would pay the victims initially, but later claim to have encountered issues with the refunds before becoming uncontactable.
“In some cases, victims were also instructed to complete a certain number of transactions within a given time frame in order to receive the payouts,” said the police.
Investment scam victims lost $66.2 million – more than triple the $21.6 million in the same period last year.
In most cases, the scammers would claim to be financial professionals and entice victims to invest via websites or apps.
The victims would be asked to transfer money to unknown bank accounts and pay administrative expenses, security fees or taxes in order to reap profits. In many instances, they would earn a profit from the investment at the initial stage.
The scammers would become uncontactable after larger amounts of money were transferred, or when the victims realised they were unable to withdraw their money.
Common platforms used by the scammers in these cases to communicate with their victims include dating app Tinder, said the police.
Scammers tend to prey on the current public sentiment and context, said police principal psychologist Carolyn Misir. She noted that e-commerce and face mask-related scams were prevalent when the Covid-19 crisis started.
“But as time went by, (people) got displaced (from their jobs) or businesses failed – then you (start to) see more loan, investment and job scams,” she said.
Since its inception in June 2019, the police’s Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) has recovered $127 million – about 33.8 per cent of the total amount lost by victims.
“Before the set-up of ASC, the recovery rate was between 3 and 8 per cent, based on our own internal research,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Police (DAC) Aileen Yap.
The ASC has worked with banks to freeze more than 17,000 bank accounts and reported more than 21,000 WhatsApp accounts believed to be related to scams.
DAC Yap said the ASC launched another initiative in July, which involves using automation to send SMS messages to alert potential scam victims determined through information gathering.
