Singapore scam crisis crying out for more urgent action

Each morning, as I leave my apartment, I am met with a grimly familiar sight. The elevator doors are plastered with garish caricatures of smug thieves swindling hapless victims who collapse in tears over vanished savings.

Downstairs, elderly residents crowd around letterboxes stamped with the government’s anti-scam hotline in scarlet block digits, their fingers trembling uncontrollably with dread as they key in the number.

These everyday encounters reflect the meteoric rise of scams in Singapore, a novel predicament for a city renowned for its ultra-low crime rates. In 2024, there were 51,501 reported cases, equivalent to one every ten minutes, more than triple the figure four years prior and amounting to an eye-watering S$1.1 billion (US$858 million) in losses.

Confronting this acute crisis will require a comprehensive tripartite response: tightening private sector safeguards, expanding digital literacy and deepening international cooperation.

Private sector defenses

While our government has made commendable strides in working with key private sector actors to introduce anti-scam measures, especially banks and major tech platforms, three rapidly growing blind spots demand urgent attention.

The first involves the explosion of cryptocurrency scams, which nearly quadrupled as a share of total losses in 2024 and are particularly problematic because of the irreversibility and pseudonymity of crypto-based transfers.

Following recent legislation empowering police to freeze suspicious bank transfers, they should carry out similar procedures on cryptocurrency exchanges, along with remittance services and e-wallet providers.

Moreover, since fraudsters often pressure victims into rushed decisions, these platforms should be required to adopt more “helpful friction” mechanisms, such as temporary withdrawal cooldowns for virtual assets, similar to those implemented in South Korea.

The second trend lies in the uptick of e-commerce scams, the most prevalent type of such fraud. As such, our government should prompt consumers to use established platforms, including Facebook Marketplace and Carousell, since they have recently enhanced seller verification using government ID checks.

Additionally, it ought to urge search engines to flag deceptive URLs, such as carousellpay.com or carousell.xxx.com, that are often used to impersonate legitimate platforms.

This could be complemented with encouragement to issue targeted warnings for items frequently exploited by scammers, most notably concert tickets, which account for over 20% of e-commerce scam losses.

Finally, our government must take firmer action against Telegram, an app increasingly favoured by scammers for its weak content moderation and lack of identity verification. Scams linked to the platform surged by a troubling 137.5% in the first half of 2024, a shift likely to persist as it is now the fifth most downloaded app in Singapore.

Because Telegram lacks legal presence in the country, authorities cannot mandate critical safeguards under the Online Criminal Harms Act, which was worryingly illustrated by its refusal to remove accounts distributing sexually explicit material.

Singapore should, therefore, join jurisdictions, including the European Union and Brazil, in compelling Telegram to establish local legal representation and impose hefty fines for non-compliance.

Boosting digital awareness

While the rapid rollout of ScamShield, our government’s artificial intelligence (AI) powered scam detection tool, has certainly been welcome, it is no substitute for the paramount line of defense: digital literacy. This is especially critical given that the app is incompatible with encrypted popular messaging platforms, including Telegram itself, and WhatsApp.

Despite the prevalence of courses such as SG ScamWISE and Tertiary Courses Singapore, participation remains worryingly low due to dangerously widespread complacency. While 84% of Singaporeans express confidence in identifying scams, only 40% can correctly detect phishing emails, highlighting the need for mandatory anti-scam education in schools and workplaces.

Although some major corporations have introduced training programs, our government should require universal participation and implement a standardized curriculum. Anti-scam education should also begin earlier in schools; the average student’s first discussion about scams occurs at age 13, three years after receiving their first mobile phone.

Schools must further support parents in reinforcing these lessons at home, since only 36% of parents currently speak with their children about online safety.

Education campaigns must also address the growing threat of ultra-sophisticated fraud schemes powered by AI, which increasingly involve manipulated voice and video to imitate trusted contacts. These efforts should focus on senior citizens, who are typically unfamiliar with such advanced technologies, and teach them to verify suspicious requests with the purported contact.

While these tools remain in relative infancy, the government should raise awareness of telltale signs, such as distorted visuals and unnatural speech-lip synchronization, and encourage the adoption of AI-detection software as deepfake technology evolves.

Public education must also counter chronic underreporting, which severely hampers efforts to identify fraudsters. Alarmingly, 64% of scam message recipients do not report them, many due to misplaced confidence that they are immune to scammers’ tactics, and others out of skepticism that reporting would lead to meaningful action.

Digital literacy initiatives should, therefore, frame scam prevention as a shared responsibility, emphasising that even the vigilant are vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated tactics, and that swift reporting helps disrupt criminal networks.

Moreover, where possible, our police should provide repeated updates to those who report scams and frequently broadcast the apprehension of fraudsters to strengthen public trust in such processes.

Another major cause of underreporting is stigma, with 27% of victims in Britain refraining from coming forward out of embarrassment. Singapore should counter this by depicting scams as a widespread and relatable threat and launch campaigns that showcase numerous testimonials from individuals whose reports led to the recovery of lost funds.

Additionally, reporting services should promote anonymous disclosure options and humanize the process by offering emotional support, dismantling the shame that too often keeps victims silent.

Forging regional partnerships

The third pillar of our strategy must centre on buttressing transnational cooperation. Although roughly 90% of scams in Singapore originate overseas, we have participated in only a limited number of cross-border enforcement raids.

Beyond expanding such involvement, our police should conduct more joint simulation exercises with regional counterparts to stress-test response protocols, which are crucial given the speed and opacity that typify scam operations.

Furthermore, Singapore should push for the inclusion of Cambodia and Myanmar, two major epicenters of scam activity, in key frameworks such as FRONTIER+, which facilitate real-time intelligence exchange and reinforce bilateral enforcement mechanisms.

Given the skeletal capabilities of local authorities in these countries, it would undoubtedly be helpful to bolster their operational capacity by offering targeted training and technical assistance.

But a more intractable challenge lies in the entrenched political protection of these operations. For instance, scam syndicates generate up to $19 billion annually in Cambodia, or roughly 60% of the country’s GDP, creating strong incentives to maintain the status quo.

Singapore’s government should recalibrate the underlying cost-benefit equation in tandem with our neighbors, making economic aid conditional on demonstrable enforcement efforts while deploying sanctions and publicly shaming officials complicit in shielding scam networks.

As the wealthiest nation per capita in Southeast Asia, we will always remain an alluring target for scammers. And we are now racing against time; with each passing day, fraud networks grow more sophisticated and exploit emerging technologies at an exponential rate.

We have made a promising start, but if we are to protect countless potential victims from having their lives upended, we must do much more.

Sean Tan is a former King’s Scholar at Eton College and intern at the Center for International Governance Innovation. He has also written articles for St Antony’s International Review Oxford, Yale’s undergraduate US-China magazine ‘China Hands’, Oxford Political Review and several other notable publications.