24-year-old Singaporean undergraduate falls victim to $14,000 scam

Christina, a 24-year-old Singaporean undergraduate, was rudely awakened to an empty bank account following a series of calls from her ‘bank’. She was informed by the ‘bank’ that her primary account had been compromised, and was asked to transfer all her funds to her secondary account.

Christina took concrete steps to verify the call. Upon inspecting her bank account, she found several unauthorised attempted transactions. She also corroborated the caller’s identity with the emergency number on the back of her bank card. Convinced, she then proceeded to transfer all her funds (a total of S$14,673 meant for her school fees) to her secondary account.

Shortly after, her secondary account was emptied out and she realised that she had fallen victim to a scam. The criminals had gained access to her secondary account and managed to spoof the phone number of her bank via a technique known as authorised push payment fraud.