Singapore police may soon have the power to force banks to freeze the accounts of stubborn scam victims who refuse to believe they have been defrauded.

The world-first bill, introduced last month, would allow officers to issue restraining orders to banks to prevent alleged victims from carrying out transactions if there is a “reasonable belief” that they are victims of a scam.

People subject to a restriction order will not be able to transfer money from their bank account to other accounts, including through online banking and ATMs.

They will also not be able to pay on credit or access personal loans.

However, the Home Office said arrangements would be made to allow them to access their money for “legitimate reasons” such as paying household bills and everyday expenses.

He said restriction orders, under the Protection from Scams Bill, would be a measure of last resort.

According to the government, 86% of scams reported in the first half of 2024 were the result of voluntary transfers of funds to fraudsters.

“In some of these cases, victims were informed by police, banks or family members that they were being scammed, but they proceeded with the money transfers anyway,” said the ministry.

Earlier this year, staff at Singapore’s DBS bank refused a customer’s request to transfer 600,000 Singapore dollars ($700,000) to another bank account they believed to be held by fraudsters, the local media.

“In the first two calls I had with him, he was evasive. On the third call, I asked him, ‘Are you sure you want to risk the savings you have worked so hard for?'” Uthayakumar Chellappan Silvaraju, from the anti-DBS group. -scam team told The Straits Times.

“That’s when he broke down and said he was doing this under someone’s instructions, but he still refused to believe it was a scam.”

The man had already transferred S$60,000 to the account.

The police were eventually able to convince him that he had been scammed and he filed a formal complaint with the police.

Police to restrict accounts for 30 days

Southeast Asia has become the epicenter of a global scam epidemic in recent years, with industrial-scale online operations often using forced labor.

In Singapore, reports of scams increased five-fold between 2019 and 2023, with losses estimated at around $650 million in 2023 alone, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Earlier this year, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat warned of a “malicious scammer” impersonating him in a phishing email.

“Remain vigilant and ignore all emails if you cannot verify the identity of the sender… phishing is one of the leading online scams in Singapore and is designed to trick victims into handing over money. money or data,” Mr. Keat wrote in a Facebook post.

Despite a series of measures introduced by the government, such as forcing banks to allow their customers to freeze their bank accounts or block a sum of money that cannot be transferred via online means if they believe they are victims of “a scam, scams continue to proliferate,” the Interior Ministry said.

The proposed restriction orders would be enforced by a police officer in a case-by-case scenario and would last up to a maximum of 30 days, but could be extended up to five times.

Such decisions could be made using information provided by the alleged scam victim and their family members, the ministry said.

Persons holding an RO can appeal the decision.

The appeal process will be processed expeditiously as an RO will remain active while the appeal is assessed, the Home Office said.

During a month-long public consultation, more than 90 percent of respondents, including people from different age groups, supported the bill aimed at protecting those who did not believe they were victims of a scam.

However, some said the government should not intervene in personal decisions and feared the new powers would be “too intrusive and open to abuse”.

“This is not the best way to go.”

Toby Murray, associate professor at the University of Melbourne, said scams were a growing problem globally and a better approach to government policy would be to place more accountability on the banks themselves, as l ‘did the UK.

In October, the Australian government proposed new laws that would require banks, telecoms operators and tech giants to detect, prevent and respond to scams.

“Regarding reducing the harm caused by scams that trick people into transferring money to fraudsters: I’m not convinced that this (Singapore) bill is the best way forward,” he said. said cybersecurity expert Dr. Murray.

“The bill seems to be based on the idea that it is the people who are being defrauded who are at fault.

Dr Murray said the development of new technologies was driving an increase in scams which could be perpetrated against more people and at lower cost.

“With the rise of large language models like ChatGPT, scammers no longer need to employ fluent English speakers to scam Australians, for example,” he said.

“The advent of deepfake technology makes it even easier for fraudsters to deceive people by pretending to be their loved ones or professional acquaintances.”

The draft law on protection against scams will have to go through a second reading in January before being put to a vote and adopted into law.