The old lady was shocked to see her savings 'disappear' from her bank account.
Instead of enjoying a peaceful retirement, a 65-year-old woman in Singapore became the victim of a sophisticated scam, losing 100,000 Singapore dollars (more than 1 billion VND) - the money she had saved all her life.
It all started on the evening of January 9, three days after she officially retired. A call from someone claiming to be a customer service representative from an e-commerce platform informed her that she owed insurance premiums on the platform. She immediately denied having an account there and asked to cancel the transaction.
However, the scammer did not give up and continued to transfer the call to a person named Jason. He had a WhatsApp profile picture with the UnionPay logo, which made her believe that he was a bank employee. Jason continued to threaten that her bank account was under investigation for money laundering. To increase the level of persuasion, he also transferred the call to another person with a profile picture with the logo of MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore). This "MAS employee" continued to assert that she needed to cooperate with Jason to "protect her assets".
Under Jason’s guidance, she downloaded a new banking app, opened a new account, and linked it to her bank account. For more than four hours, she was so engrossed in following the scammers’ instructions that she even forgot about dinner.
Realizing something was wrong, her sister repeatedly tried to dissuade her but to no avail. Her niece, surnamed Ngo (phonetic transcription), also rushed to the house at 10 p.m. to stop her. However, she still tried to follow the scammers' instructions and repeatedly logged into another bank account.
"We kept reminding her that it was a scam and asked her to hang up, but she refused. In the end, I had to hang up the call myself," the niece said.
When the dust settled, the family was shocked to discover that two large sums of money had been withdrawn from her account, including S$75,000 and S$25,000. The third transaction failed as the account was already depleted. Fortunately, she had forgotten the password to another bank account, so the money was still there.
When she checked the new account she had opened following Jason’s instructions, her granddaughter was shocked to find it completely empty. Realizing she had been scammed, she immediately reported it to the police, canceled her online bank account, and even switched to a new phone to avoid being tracked.
Sharing with Shin Min Daily News, the woman choked up and said: "I just retired on January 6, and just three days later I was scammed out of all my savings."
She said that this was a fixed deposit that matured in December last year. She was planning to reinvest it when she unfortunately encountered the scammers. What she regrets most is that although she usually does not answer unknown numbers, she accidentally answered the phone that day without knowing the reason.
"The scammers kept calling me, pressuring me, making me panic. One even called me on video, his tone was very serious. I was so panicked that I just wanted to protect my money, so I did everything they asked."
Singapore police have taken over the case and are investigating.
PV (synthesis)