In December, Singaporeans lost over S$8.5 million to scammers. Of this sum, about S$2.7 million was lost to phishing scams masquerading as OCBC over the Christmas weekend alone.
Some scammers are even worse than scum, and continue to prey on the same victims by running a “recovery room” scam. This basically exploits our feelings of loss and shame, and how the scammers do it is that they pretend to be someone who can help you get back your money, such as a “bank officer”, the “police”, or the “CIA”, or even the “FBI” (don’t laugh – that’s exactly what happened to my mom).
It is sad but this will continue to happen if we’re not careful. And while this time the scammers pretended to be OCBC, it could very well be DBS or UOB tomorrow, or even SingPost, the police, the Ministry of Health, or any other institution.
When you click on suspicious links or input your login details into fraudulent websites, it is extremely difficult for the bank / PayPal / financial institution to be able to verify whether that particular transaction is authentic or not.