35-year-old Singaporean woman loses $67,500 to WeChat impersonation scam involving fake anti-scam insurance policy

Summary

A 35-year-old Singaporean woman lost $67,500 after a scammer impersonated a WeChat employee and falsely claimed she had purchased an "anti-scam insurance" policy through her Trust Bank card linked to WeChat. The scammer convinced her to transfer money to cancel the non-existent policy, claiming she needed to make several transfers to "authenticate" the cancellation. Over the course of an almost two-hour call, she took out loans totaling $44,500 and transferred an additional $23,000 in savings to an offshore account. She only realized she had been scammed after noticing the $23,000 was deducted from her account. Ms Ng has reported the incident to the police, who are investigating. In the first half of 2024, scam losses in Singapore reached $385.6 million, with impersonation scams involving Chinese companies accounting for $27.9 million in losses between August 28, 2024, and the end of the year.