Banks park staff at police complex to combat scams

BANKS in Singapore are taking a more active approach in combating scams, working closely with the police at the Police Cantonment Complex.

In a media release on Tuesday (Sep 6) to announce the Singapore Police Force (SPF)’s anti-scam command office (ASCom), the police said 6 banks have assigned representatives to work at the complex to combat scams since Jul 25 this year.

Representatives from DBS, OCBC, UOB, Standard Chartered, HSBC and CIMB have been involved in efforts to trace funds and freeze bank accounts suspected to be involved in scammers’ operations.

The police said more than S$1.5 million has been recovered from bank accounts and e-wallets suspected to be involved with scams since the representatives were assigned to the police. This accounts for 60 per cent of the amount lost to the 40 scam cases that have been investigated so far. 

DBS group head of investigations Elvin Lim said he is glad that other banks have come aboard to support the endeavour. The lender has been seconding full-time staff to the police since the SPF launched the Anti-Scam Centre in 2019 to freeze bank accounts and mitigate scam victims’ losses.

“Our long-standing collaboration and belief in the effectiveness of co-locating our bank staff to aid in fund tracing and recovery have resulted in several successful and timely customer interventions, as well as breakthroughs in enforcement action undertaken by the police,” he said.

OCBC head of anti-fraud Beaver Chua said that the bank has been able to coordinate more effectively with other financial institutions located on-site to stop scams as they are happening.

In the past, he said, OCBC would have to go to the police to relay the message that a scam had occurred with another bank. 

“The police will need more details, and they will come back to you again, and then you go back and forth.

“Now, because we are all located here, we notify the police, everybody can reach out right here and get it sorted out. The recovery can be done right on the spot in a matter of minutes,” Chua said.

Government Technology Agency staff have also been deployed on-site to investigate Singpass-related scams by leveraging Singpass’ fraud analytics capabilities to identify and flag unusual account activities.

In addition, ASCom has partnerships with more than 80 institutions in the fight against scams. These institutions include local and foreign banks, card security groups, non-bank financial institutions such as Grab and Singtel Dash, fintech companies and cryptocurrency houses such as Coinhako and Wise.

Chua said that it would be helpful for more institutions to engage with ASCom. 

“Nowadays, (scams) are electronic; so by having all this co-location and working alongside each other, I think it will definitely speed things up,” he said.

Aside from collaborating with more institutions, ASCom has also been proactively carrying out online trawling and sending advisories to more than 95,000 individuals, such as those who may have received scam advertisements.

Furthermore, ASCom is collaborating more closely with the newly set-up scam strike teams in 7 land divisions.

Since March 2022, it has coordinated 12 operations and arrested more than 3,900 scammers and money mules. 

Commercial Affairs Department deputy director Shee Tek Tze said that ASCom will be able to work with international counterparts and industry partners to fight scams. 

“This will enable the SPF to take swifter and more holistic action towards scammers,” he said.