Scams and cybercrime continue to rise in Singapore as scammers opt to reach victims through text messages and social media platforms.
Meta’s trio of platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — are of particular concern, along with Telegram, the latter of which was used in 45% of scams, according to Latest statistics from the Singapore Police Force (SPF).
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The number of scams and cybercrimes rose by 18% to 28,751 from January to June this year, up from 24,367 in the same period in 2023. Scams increased by 16.3% year-on-year, accounting for 92.5% of the total, with victims losing S$385.6 million (US$294.65 million) in such incidents, up 24.6% from last year.
Overall, victims lost an average of S$14,503 per scam, up 7.1% from last year.
About 86% of the reported cases were “self-executed” transfers, in which victims were manipulated into making transactions without the scammer having direct control of the user’s account. The SPF explains that this could be the result of social engineering and phishing involving a variety of scamming methods.
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Law enforcement added that most scammers contacted their victims through text messages, social media, and online shopping platforms. Those were the top three methods of contact, with phone calls and other websites rounding out the top five.
Specifically, messaging apps were used as a method of communication in 8,336 scams, compared to 6,555 in the same period last year. The SPF said WhatsApp was the most popular app, accounting for 50.2% of scams. They also pointed to Telegram, which saw a 137.5% spike in scams, accounting for 45% of the messaging platform used to contact victims.
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Social media was used in 7,737 scams, up from 5,937 in the first half of 2023. Facebook accounted for 64.4% of the total, followed by Instagram at 18.6%. About 50.9% of people contacted via Facebook were victims of e-commerce scams.
According to the SPF report, while most fraud victims were under 50 years old, accounting for 74.2% of all victims, the average loss per victim was highest among those aged 65 and over.
Furthermore, scams involving impersonating government officials had the highest average loss of S$116,534 per incident, followed by S$40,080 per investment scam. The SPF explained that scammers using these two methods often move on to social engineering and fraud over time.
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At least S$13.3 million was also lost. Internet fraudaccounting for 3.4% of the total scam loss. Another S$67.5 million was lost to scammers impersonating government officials, or 17.5% of the total loss. There were 3,447 reported scams involving emails, text messages, calls and advertisements from scammers impersonating government officials, financial institutions and other organisations business.
About 580 scams involved impersonating government officials, up 58% from last year. These incidents caused a total loss of S$67.5 million, up 67.1% from S$40.4 million in 2023.
There were some positives, however, with malware scams falling 86.2% in the first half of 2024, compared to 687 in the same period last year. The total amount lost in such incidents also fell 96.8% to S$295,000, from a whopping S$9.1 million the year before.
