In Singapore, more than $2.7 billion has been lost to scams since 2019.

To put that figure into perspective, that would equate to 90 good-class bungalows, assuming each property is worth around $30 million.

The numbers are expected to rise further, with victims losing a record of over $385.6 million in the first half of 2024.

The Singapore authorities are trying to combat this scourge by introducing laws and regulations and conducting awareness campaigns.

In 2020, the National Crime Prevention Council collaborated with the Singapore Police Force to launch an anti-scam campaign with the slogan “Spot the signs. Stop the crimes.»

The goal was to educate the public on how to spot different signs of scams, including looking for too-good-to-be-true deals and e-commerce sellers that haven’t been verified.

The campaign received the updated slogan of “I can ACT against scams» in 2023, with the acronym ACT describing how members of the public can add security features, check signs and notify authorities and others about scams.

But scammers also read news and reviews and have repeatedly shown that they are able to adapt quickly and find new ways to circumvent anti-scam controls.

By the time advice on how to avoid scams has been released to the general public, scammers are said to have already come up with new tricks to trick victims into parting with their money.

With the addition of new technologies and AI, it becomes even more difficult for authorities to keep up.

Mr. Jorji Abraham, Managing Director of Gasa, gave several examples of how anti-scam measures were thwarted.

He said that previously the public was told they could tell if a website was safe by checking that it started with “https” instead of “http”, meaning the site was secure. using a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate.

“But now SSL certificates are free and every fraudulent site has an SSL certificate,” he said.