Another unfortunate case of the fake China cops scam has surfaced. This time, the victim is a Singaporean man in his 60s, who lost about $270,000 from five POSB accounts under his name over eight days last month. Sadly enough, that money was supposed to go towards his children’s education and his family’s expenses.
The fateful morning came when the man received a phone call from someone claiming to be a policeman, who relayed the message that a female ‘bank employee’ who contacted him in the past had been arrested overseas. That person also said that the man’s accounts had been implicated in her crimes, and would be frozen if he did not call Chinese police officers and do as they told him to.
So he cooperated with the ‘police officers’ on the money laundering ‘case’ — he gave them his details and applied for an Internet banking token, which he had never used before. Every day, he dialled a Chinese number and spoke to a man named Liew for about an hour. He was told to read out codes on the token after pushing a button, and did this seven times a day.
Heartbreakingly, after almost two weeks had passed, he noticed that five of his family’s bank accounts were wiped out. Even the money from his children’s and sister’s joint accounts with him were transferred to his own before disappearing in amounts between $417 and $2,029.
“It was as though I had been hypnotised, I believed everything they said,” the man told The Straits Times. “”I don’t know what is going to happen. My life savings… are all gone just like that.”
He has admitted everything to his family and reported the case to the police. The bank also told him to close his accounts. The case is currently under police investigation.
