Nearly $1 billion lost by scam victims in Singapore since 2016

The recent phishing saga involving customers of OCBC Bank has highlighted the epidemic of scams in Singapore, where victims have lost more than $965 million in just over 5½ years, checks by The Straits Times showed. Scammers pocketed a record high $268.4 million in total in 2020, a figure Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam revealed last year in a written response to a parliamentary question on scams.

Criminologist Olivia Choy, from NTU’s psychology department, said financial and emotional stress triggered by the pandemic could have made people more vulnerable to scams. "Such stressors can lead to poorer decision-making, and with more people going online for work and leisure, there is an influx of potential victims for opportunistic scammers," she added.

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Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels