Instead of enjoying the fruits of her labour after decades of working, a Singaporean woman was left S$100,000 (approx. RM324,000) poorer after falling for a scam.
What made things worse was the fact that she had retired for three days before getting that fateful call which would later lead to her life savings slipping through her fingers.
SG woman loses over RM320K to scam after 3 days into retirement
Speaking to Shin Min Daily News about the incident, the 65-year-old woman, who’s single and lives with her sister, said she retired on Jan 6 and received a call from a person claiming to be from Shopee’s customer service department on Jan 9.
During the call, the scammer told the woman she hadn’t paid for her insurance premium on the platform. In response, she said she didn’t have a Shopee account, let alone buying insurance for it, and requested for it to be cancelled.
The call was then transferred to another person named “Jason”, who had a UnionPay logo on his WhatsApp profile picture, leading the woman to believe he was a bank employee.
This time around, Jason had more alarming news for the woman: her bank account was allegedly involved in money laundering and the case would be handed over to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
A WhatsApp call was then made to the woman by another person, whose profile picture displayed the MAS logo and told her that Jason would contact her again to solve the issue.
Jason asked me to transfer funds into a GXS bank account in order to safeguard my money. I followed his instructions, downloaded the GXS app and opened an account, before connecting it to my UOB account,” she recounted.
For the next four hours, the woman found herself deep in conversation with the scammers, causing her to skip dinner in the process. Although her sister tried telling her to hang up several times, it failed.
This prompted the woman’s sister to ask her niece surnamed Wu (transliteration) to come over. When the latter arrived at 10pm, the woman was still talking to the scammers, causing Wu to hang up on her behalf.
Unfortunately, it proved to be a little too late as the woman had already made two transactions worth S$75,000 (approx. RM243,000) and S$25,000 (approx. RM81,000) respectively. The third transaction didn’t go through as her account didn’t have enough funds.
Wu told Shin Min that her aunt had forgotten the password to her other bank account, so she couldn’t log in and the money wasn’t affected.
When Wu checked on her aunt’s GXS account, it turned up empty. Finally, it dawned on the woman that she had been scammed and she immediately called the police before cancelling her online banking account and getting a new phone.
Was driven by fear
The woman told Shin Min that the S$100,000 had been sitting inside a fixed deposit and matured last December, adding she had plans to reinvest the money before scammers took it all away.
She also said that while she usually doesn’t entertain calls from unknown numbers, she admitted she fell for the scammers’ ploy largely out of fear.
They kept contacting me, and I didn’t have time to verify their identity. One even video-called me and sounded very solemn, so I was afraid. I just wanted to safeguard my money, so I did everything they said.”
Police later confirmed receiving a report on the incident and investigations are currently underway.
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