SINGAPORE: The Police issued an advisory regarding a scam variant wherein fraudsters impersonate companies’ senior executives on WhatsApp.
This has been going on since January 2025, with at least 10 reported cases, with total losses amounting to at least S$13.5 million, the Public Affairs Department of the Singapore Police Force said on Thursday (Feb 26).
Modus operandi
With this particular scam, a fraudster creates a WhatsApp account with the name of the Chief Executive Officer or supervisor of a company, along with a profile picture that is publicly available.
They then send a message to a would-be victim, someone who works in the same company, purporting to be the CEO or supervisor.
The scammers would go so far in some cases as to arrange for Zoom calls, with the scammers would change their appearance using digital manipulation and pretend to be the company’s senior executives, investors, or even officials from the city-state’s Central Bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The scammers would then instruct the victims to work on “confidential projects” and made to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from communicating or checking with their colleagues on the “projects,” the Police added.
The victims would be required to give confidential company information, including bank account balances, and would be instructed to transfer company funds for the fake projects.
When the victims checked with the company’s actual CEOs or supervisors, they would find out that it was a scam.
What to do in such cases
The Police have advised companies to adopt the following preventive measures in order to avoid being scammed.
- Inform the company’s employees about this scam, especially new hires and interns.
- Exercise caution regarding unusual requests to transfer company funds, especially large amounts.
- Before proceeding with any unusual instructions, always verify these with relevant colleagues using a different medium, such as phone calls or enterprise communication channels.
- Use official channels such as company emails for work-related communications, and more important of all, check that the sender’s email address is the legitimate email address of the person they claim to be.
- Report any scam encounters to the Police immediately.
“For more information on scams, members of the public can visit www.scamshield.gov.sg or call the ScamShield Helpline at 1799. Fighting scams is a community effort. Together, we can ACT Against Scams to safeguard our community!” the Police added. /TISG
