You will be able to make a police report that gives investigators what they need.
The bank has frozen your accounts. The adrenaline is wearing off, and now you're angry. The scammer's WhatsApp chat is still open on your screen, full of fake reassurances and the fake officer's badge photo. Every instinct says block him, delete the whole thing and never look at it again.
Hold off for a few minutes. That chat is evidence, and so is almost everything else on your phone from the last few days. This lesson covers the second job of the first hour: making a police report, and keeping the material that gives investigators something to work with.
Once your bank has frozen your accounts, as in lesson 8.1, The first fifteen minutes: call the bank and freeze, make a police report. You can do this in two ways.
The first is online, through the Singapore Police Force website at police.gov.sg, which has an e-services section for lodging reports. This is usually the quickest route, and you can do it from home at any hour. The second is in person at a police station or neighbourhood police centre. Go in person if you're not comfortable filling in a form online, or if you'd simply rather talk it through with an officer.
Either way, a report does several things. It starts an investigation. It puts on record the accounts your money went to, which helps police and banks act against them. Your bank may ask for the police report number as part of its own investigation. And it adds your case to what police know about the scams going round, which shapes the warnings other people see.
Make the report even if the amount was small, or you think the money is gone for good. The same accounts and phone numbers are often used against many people, and your report may be the one that links them.
Investigators work from details. The more of these you can give them, the better. Before you report, gather:
screenshots of the chats, including the scammer's profile, name and number as they appear the phone numbers that called or messaged you, with dates and times the bank account numbers, PayNow details or wallet addresses you sent money to any links you were sent, and the names of any apps or websites involved your transaction records, including the bank's alert messages and your app's transaction history the reference number from your call to the bank
Screenshot as you go, and make sure each one shows the date and time where possible. For a long chat, a screenshot of every screen is tiring but worth it. You'll also want the full chat as a file, which is covered below.
If you met the scammer through a social media account, a dating profile or an ad, screenshot the profile page or the ad itself too. These are often deleted soon after a scam, and once they're gone, you can't get them back.
This is the mistake almost everyone wants to make. Blocking the scammer feels like taking back control. Deleting the chat makes the whole thing feel smaller. But both can destroy evidence.
On some apps, blocking or deleting a contact also removes or hides the conversation, and once a chat is deleted from your phone, it may be impossible to recover. Scammers also delete their own messages and accounts, so your copy may be the only one left.
So save first, then block. Take your screenshots, export the chat, and note the numbers. Once you've reported to the police and they have what they need, block the scammer everywhere and report the number through ScamShield, as you learned in lesson 7.1.
The same goes for apps. If a malicious app was involved, it's tempting to delete it immediately. Take a screenshot of the app's name and icon first. Lesson 8.3, Secure your logins and watch for recovery scams, covers how to clean up your phone after that.
WhatsApp lets you export a whole conversation as a file. Open the chat, open the menu, either the three dots on Android or the contact's name at the top on iPhone, and look for export chat. You'll be asked whether to include media. Including media keeps photos and voice notes but makes the file much larger. Then choose where to save or send it.
Other chat apps have their own ways of saving a conversation, often in the settings for each chat. If you can't find one, screenshots of the full conversation do the job.
Here is an illustration. Ravi, 45, was scammed through a fake job offer on Telegram. Before reporting, he screenshots the recruiter's profile and every message, exports the WhatsApp chat with the "supervisor" who took his deposits, and saves his transaction records as PDFs from his banking app. He puts them all in one place on his phone. When he lodges his report online, he can answer every question straight from that folder.
Everything above assumes the scam is over and you're dealing with the aftermath. If you're in danger, or the scam is happening right now, call 999.
That includes someone threatening you or a family member, a person at your door demanding money or cards, or a situation where you believe someone is about to hand over money or valuables in person to a scammer. Don't wait to gather evidence first.
Ravi had to build his folder in a hurry, with his hands shaking. The calm version takes five minutes on an ordinary evening, and the activity walks you through it.
Create a folder on your phone named for scam evidence and note how you would export a WhatsApp chat into it.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).