GEIS-新闻详情

Four teens among 11 suspects nabbed in two-week islandwide anti-scam operations

2023-09-24 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-新加坡原网页

SINGAPORE - Four teenagers were among 11 people arrested for their alleged involvement in a spate of banking-related malware scams, the police said on Saturday.

The teenagers, three male and one female, are aged between 16 and 19. The other seven suspects, six men and one woman, are aged between 20 and 57.

They were nabbed following islandwide anti-scam operations by the Commercial Affairs Department and Police Intelligence Department from Sept 11 to 22.

Another five men and a woman, aged between 21 and 41, are assisting with investigations.

The police said 10 people, including the four teenagers, had allegedly facilitated the scam cases by relinquishing their bank accounts, Internet banking credentials and Singpass credentials for monetary gains. One of the suspects, a 28-year-old, is believed to have withdrawn money from his bank account and handed the money to an unknown person, the police added.

Since January, the police have received an increasing number of reports of unauthorised bank transactions made after victims’ mobile devices were compromised by malware – even when the victims did not share their Internet banking credentials, one-time passwords or Singpass credentials to anyone.

From January to June, 22,339 scam cases were reported, a 64.5 per cent increase from the 13,576 cases during the same period in 2022. However, the total amount victims lost in the first half of 2023 dipped slightly to $334.5 million, from $342.1 million during the same period in 2022.

The victims responded to advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook, and were duped into downloading an Android Package Kit from unofficial app stores, which led to malware being installed on their mobile devices. Subsequently, the scammers convinced the victims via phone calls or text messages to turn on accessibility services on their Android phones, which weakened the phones’ security and allowed scammers to take full control of the victims’ phones.

Scammers could then take note of every keystroke, steal banking credentials stored on the phones, remotely log in and access victims’ banking apps, add money mules as payees, raise payment limits and transfer money to money mules.

The scammers could also delete SMSes and e-mail notifications related to these bank transfers to cover their tracks.