Fraud and cybercrime continues to be on the rise in Singapore, with scammers choosing to contact victims through messaging and social media platforms.
According to the latest statistics from the Singapore Police Force (SPF), three Meta platforms – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – are of particular concern, along with Telegram, which is used in 45% of fraud cases.
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The number of fraud and cybercrime cases increased 18% from January to June this year, to 28,751 cases from 24,367 in the same period in 2023. Fraud increased 16.3% year-on-year, accounting for 92.5% of the total, with victims losing S$385.6 million (US$294.65 million), up 24.6% from last year.
Overall, scam victims lost an average of S$14,503, up 7.1% from last year.
Approximately 86% of the reported cases were “self-executed” funds transfers, where the fraudsters manipulated the victim into executing the transaction without direct control over the user account. The SPF explained that these were likely the result of social engineering and deception involving a range of fraud techniques.
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The law enforcement agency added that most of the scammers contacted their victims through messaging, social media and online shopping platforms, which were the top three contact methods, with phone calls and other websites rounding out the top five.
In particular, messaging apps were used as a means of communication in 8,336 scam cases, up from 6,555 in the same period last year. WhatsApp was the most popular, accounting for 50.2% of scams, according to the SPF. They also noted Telegram, which saw a 137.5% surge in scam cases and accounted for 45% of messaging platforms used to contact victims.
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Social media was used in 7,737 fraud cases, up from 5,937 in the first half of 2023. Facebook accounted for 64.4% of the total, followed by Instagram at 18.6%. Around 50.9% of people contacted via Facebook were victims of e-commerce fraud.
According to the SPF report, most fraud victims were under the age of 50, accounting for 74.2% of the total, but the average loss per victim was highest among those aged 65 and over.
Furthermore, government impersonation scams had the highest average loss at S$116,534 per case, followed by investment scams at S$40,080 per case. The SPF explained that scammers using these two techniques often move on to social engineering and deception over time.
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Phishing scams also caused losses of at least S$13.3 million, accounting for 3.4% of total fraud losses. Fraudsters impersonating government officials caused losses of S$67.5 million, or 17.5% of total losses. There were 3,447 reported phishing incidents, including emails, text messages, calls and advertisements from scammers impersonating government officials, financial institutions and other businesses.
There were about 580 cases of government official impersonation fraud, up 58% from last year. Total losses from these cases amounted to S$67.5 million, up 67.1% from S$40.4 million in 2023.
However, there were some positive results, with malware-based fraud cases falling 86.2% in the first half of 2024, compared to 687 cases in the same period last year. The total amount lost in such incidents also fell 96.8% to S$295,000, from S$9.1 million the previous year.