OCBC completes arrangements for full payouts to all 790 SMS phishing victims; S$13.7m in losses

OCBC on Sunday (Jan 30) said arrangements for full goodwill payouts to all victims of the recent SMS phishing scam have been completed.

Some 790 victims had fallen prey to the scam, with total losses amounting to S$13.7 million. About 80 per cent of the amount lost occurred during the year-end festive period of Dec 23-31, the lender said in a statement.

During this period, calls made to the bank's contact centre surged by over 40 per cent.

There have been no further fraudulent transactions in relation to this scam over the past few weeks.

OCBC said the numbers of 469 victims and scammed amount of S$8.5 million reported on Dec 30 were based on the police reports made by victims at that time. More police reports were made and submitted to the bank since the start of January.

Its investigation has confirmed that victims had provided their online banking log-in credentials and one-time PINs to phishing websites, thereby enabling the scammers to take over their bank accounts and make fraudulent transactions.

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The bank decided to make the full payout as a "one-off gesture of goodwill" given the circumstances of this scam.

"We also took into consideration that our customer service and response fell short of our own expectations, that could have affected loss mitigation in some of the cases," it said. 

OCBC began releasing payouts to affected customers since Jan 8.