SINGAPORE – When Sam (not his real name), a migrant worker, accepted a job offer on June 20 last year, all he wanted was to earn more money quickly, so that he could build a bigger and more comfortable home for his family in Bangladesh.
The 45-year-old, who last saw his loved ones in August 2019, said: “I think everyone has plans to build their own house. It is my plan to build a nice house for my family.”
Two days later, Sam, who works as a production coordinator in a warehouse here, lost more than $11,000, which is almost equivalent to his salary for a year, to a job scam.
He told The Straits Times that he responded to a WhatsApp message from a foreign number which informed him that he could earn a commission by completing 60 orders on an online portal. However, he had to deposit some money into a bank account first.
Sam put in $135 on June 21 and received $404 on the same day.
The next day, he made eight transactions amounting to $11,730, but was unable to retrieve his money later because he could not complete the orders.
That was when he realised that he had fallen for a scam and made a police report on the same day. The police confirmed that a report was lodged and are investigating.
Last year, there were 3,181 migrant workers who were victims of scams, up from 1,965 in 2020, said the police.
About 357 domestic workers were scammed last year, an increase from the 216 in 2020.
As at December last year, there were 246,300 migrant domestic workers in Singapore and 318,400 work permit holders in the construction, marine and process sectors, according to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
The police said they work closely with MOM and non-profit organisations to share the latest crime trends and anti-scam advisories with workers.
S11 Dormitories, which has about 13,000 occupants across its two facilities in Punggol and Changi, said it is working with the police to organise talks.
A spokesman said the upcoming talks will be conducted “in our dormitories by officers who will explain the different types of scams migrant workers may be susceptible to”.
Mr Ethan Guo, general manager of Transient Workers Count Too, said migrant workers are generally affected more by employment scams.
“One needs to only go on Facebook to look at the many job ads that target migrant workers. They look very similar to posts by registered employment agents and therefore, to an untrained eye, impossible to tell one apart from another,” he added.
