Take the first steps that give you the best chance of stopping any more money from leaving.
At 9.40pm on a weeknight, Elaine, 38, puts down the phone after a call from a man who said he was from her bank's fraud team (an invented example). She gave him a one-time password, and something he said at the end of the call did not sit right. She opens her banking app and finds two transfers she did not make, both in the last twenty minutes: S$4,000 at 9.21pm and S$3,500 at 9.33pm. Both went to the same account ending 4417 at another bank.
What you do in the first fifteen minutes after discovering a scam affects whether the money can be stopped. Most people's first reactions waste that time. They sit still, call the scammer back to demand an explanation, or message a friend for advice. Acting in the right order will not always get the money back, but it gives you the best chance there is.
Scammers do not leave stolen money where it first lands. The receiving account is usually only the first stop. Often it belongs to a money mule, the kind of account you met in Lesson 3.3, When a job is really money mule recruitment. From that first account, the money is split and sent on through other accounts, sometimes within minutes, until it is overseas or turned into something hard to trace.
While the money is still in the first account, your bank has a real chance of stopping it there. Once it has moved two or three times, that chance drops sharply. Your first steps have a single goal: get the bank involved before the money moves again. Call the bank first, before the police, before changing passwords and before telling family.
Every major bank in Singapore runs a 24-hour hotline for fraud and lost cards. Take the number from the back of your card, from the bank's official website, or from the contact you saved in Lesson 2.3. Never use a number from a message, or one given to you by the caller you just spoke to. Your phone itself may be compromised, for example if you installed an app a scammer asked you to install. If so, call from a different phone if you can.
When you get through, say clearly that you have been scammed and want your accounts and cards frozen. Ask the bank to freeze everything you hold with them, including accounts the money did not leave from, because scammers who get into one account often have access to others.
Hotlines can be busy, especially late at night or when a scam is spreading widely. If you can't get through quickly, don't stay on hold while money keeps leaving. Open your banking app and use the emergency freeze, also called the kill switch, which you located in Lesson 7.3, Transfer limits, alerts and the emergency freeze. It blocks your cards and stops digital transactions immediately, and it takes under a minute. Then keep trying the hotline. The freeze stops further losses, but the bank still needs your call before it can act on the transfers already made.
If you hold accounts at more than one bank and the scammer may have reached them, freeze each one. Start with the bank that holds the most money.
For each transfer you did not make, or were tricked into making, the bank needs:
the date and time the amount the recipient account number and bank, or the PayNow details it went to
These details are in your transaction history or in the alerts on your phone. Read them out exactly as they appear. If there were several transfers, go through each one.
The bank also wants a brief account of what happened. Say whether it started with a call, a message, a link or an app, and whether you gave anyone a code or logged in somewhere. You don't need to tell the whole story at this stage. A few sentences are enough for the bank to act.
Before you hang up, ask for a reference number for your report and write it down with the time of the call. You will need it for the police report and for any follow-up with the bank. After the bank call, make the police report and secure your logins. These steps are in Lesson 8.2, Report to the police and keep the evidence, and Lesson 8.3, Secure your logins and watch for recovery scams.
Elaine called her bank's hotline from her husband's phone. She said she had been scammed and asked for all her accounts and cards to be frozen. She read out both transfers with their times, amounts and recipient: S$4,000 at 9.21pm and S$3,500 at 9.33pm, to the account ending 4417 at another bank. She briefly explained that a man had called pretending to be from the bank's fraud team and that she had given him a one-time password. The officer froze her accounts and started trying to recall the transfers while she was still on the line.
Whether Elaine gets her money back depends on where it has gone. She gave the bank everything it needed within ten minutes of noticing, and she did not have to search for what to say.
Many people who know exactly what happened still stumble on the phone, because they have never had to put it into words. Preparing the words in advance helps. In the activity, you will draft what you would say if you had to call your bank after a scam.
Write down exactly what you would say to your bank's hotline after a scam, with the details the bank will ask you for.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).