SINGAPORE (Commonwealth Union)_ An online order that was supposed to cost $10 for grouper fillets ended up costing one woman over $44,000 after scammers took control of her Android phone and banking details remotely.
Ms Jacqueline Khoo, 58, lost $44,487 from three bank savings accounts from POSB and two credit card accounts a few hours after she clicked on a link to download a third-party app, following which the scammers increased her credit limits and siphoned out her money.
On 25th August, Ms Khoo who works as a merchandiser at book store, had chanced upon a Facebook that advertised grouper fillets from a seafood supplier called “Fresh Market TGS”.
She was attracted by the deal that offered $10 grouper fillet with free shipping and contacted the seller on Facebook.
She told The Straits Times that although she never bought anything from Facebook before, she had previously bought fish and pork from Shopee and Qoo10 and was not suspicious of the advert as it never occurred to her that this was a scam.
The seller texted Ms Khoo on WhatsApp and instructed her to download a third-party app on her phone, called Grab&Go. The app prompted her to make a “deposit” payment of $5 through PayNow before her order could be placed, but she asked if she could pay when her order arrived.
The seller who reassured her that he did not need her banking details, asked her to enter her name, address and phone number on the app to check out her purchase.
Ms Khoo, did not suspect anything until 8 pm that day, and when she was calling friends she noticed that her phone felt “extremely hot” and the screen had gone blank.
When her phone restarted by itself twice, she quickly uninstalled the application and rushed to charge it, thinking it was out of battery.
When she wanted to check if she had received her pay, 3 days later, she realized that she was only “left with a few dollars” in her bank accounts.
The scammers who had raised her transaction limit from $25,000 to $50,000 had transferred about $32,000 out of her three POSB savings accounts to a Hong Leong Bank account.
Later, when checking her POSB online banking app, she realized a further $12,000 was missing from two POSB credit card accounts.
She said that the money she had set aside had been for her 16-year-old daughter’s school fees and insurance.
“Everything’s gone. I can’t sleep and can’t eat.” Ms Khoo, who also has a 26-year-old daughter working as a nurse said “This was my hard-earned money and I need to pay for my younger daughter’s school fees and insurance.”
Ms Khoo lodged a police report on 28th August, and sought help from Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC MP Lawrence Wong to write appeals to POSB and the Monetary Authority of Singapore to waive off the amounts drawn from her credit card and bank accounts.
The police confirmed that a report had been made and that investigations were ongoing.
DBS Bank, which runs POSB, said when contacted, that it has dedicated resources to “act swiftly and assist” customers who are scammed, including a dedicated fraud hotline – 1800-339-6963 (from Singapore) or (+65) 6339-6963 from overseas which also has a safety switch function on the digibank app, which would temporarily block access to funds.
DBS said “We will assist these customers with necessary follow-up actions, which include making a police report, or replacing their cards/re-securing their accounts.” They said that while they continued to adopt multi-pronged measures to strengthen fraud prevention and recovery, customers remained the first line of defense in safeguarding against scams.
Ms Khoo wonders how such large sums had been transferred out of her accounts without any notifications sent to her.
She said that she did not get any one-time passwords (OTPs) in SMSs sent by the bank to verify the unauthorized transactions and was very scared and frustrated.
Scams who use the same tactic whereby “sellers” send victims payment links that download malware into their phones, enabling scammers to control their devices remotely and drain their bank accounts are becoming increasingly common.
Earlier in September, a woman lost $76,000 after downloading a third-party app to buy mooncakes. Another woman lost more than $20,000 from credit card and bank accounts after downloading a third-party app to order food.
There were 22,339 scam cases reported from January to June 2023, a 64.5 % increase from the 13,576 cases in the same period last year. The amount lost totaled $334.5 million.
