The Police have observed a re-emergence of the Police impersonation scam and would like to alert the public who receive phone calls from persons claiming to be officers from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) to be vigilant.
In these cases, victims would receive unsolicited calls through messaging applications such as WhatsApp, imo and Viber, or via normal phone calls. These scammers would claim to be police officers and use publicly available photographs of actual police officers as their profile picture on the messaging applications. The victims were informed there were issues with their bank accounts. Under the pretext of assisting the victims to resolve the issue, the scammers would then request for the victims’ bank account or credit card details and One-Time Password (OTP). The victims only discovered that they had been scammed when they noticed unauthorised transactions made to their bank accounts or credit cards.
The Police would like to emphasise that these calls were not made by police officers. Members of the public who receive such phone calls are advised to take the following crime prevention measures:
- Ignore the instructions. No government agency will obtain personal information through telephone call;
- Never disclose your personal or Internet banking details and OTP to anyone; and
- Report any fraudulent credit/debit card charges to your bank and cancel your card immediately.
If you have information related to such cases, please call the Police hotline at 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness. Please dial ‘999’ if you require urgent Police assistance.
For more information on scams, members of the public can visit www.scamalert.sg or call the anti-scam hotline at 1800-722-6688. Join the ‘Spot the Signs. Stop the Crimes’ campaign at www.scamalert.sg/fight by signing up as an advocate to receive up-to-date messages and share them with your family and friends. Together, we can help stop scams and prevent our loved ones from becoming the next victim.
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
10 February 2021 @ 3:50 PM