Make a one-page card that you or someone in your family can follow in the first hour after a scam.
Turn over each bank card in your wallet and check that the hotline number on the back is still readable. Those numbers are the first thing your household will need if someone is scammed, and they belong on a single page that anyone at home can follow.
Picture a father calling his adult child at 11pm, his voice shaking. Earlier that evening he spoke to a "bank officer", and he has just realised the caller was not from the bank. Money has gone. The child knows what to do from lessons 8.1 to 8.3, but is half asleep, the father is panicking, and neither of them can remember which bank's hotline is which. Nobody rereads a course in a crisis. What helps is one page with every number and every step on it, in order, that can be followed without thinking.
That page is an emergency card: one side of one page covering the first hour after a scam, with five sections in this order: Freeze, Report, Evidence, Clean up and Recovery warning. Write it for someone who is frightened, who may be holding a phone they do not trust, and who has not taken this course. Keep it to one side of one page, because people abandon longer cards halfway through.
For each bank account, copy the official hotline from the back of the bank card or from the bank's own website. Never take a number from a search result ad or from a message. If you finished Lesson 7.4, Set up your anti-scam settings checklist, you already have these numbers written down, along with the location of each bank app's emergency freeze, the function that freezes the account. The freeze sits in a different place in each bank's app, so note the exact menu path. If the card is for the whole household, include the accounts of everyone it is meant for.
Put the freeze section at the top. List each bank with its hotline and the path to its emergency freeze, for example "Bank A: hotline on back of card, freeze under Profile, Security". Add a line telling the reader to call from a different phone if this one might be compromised.
The report section comes next. A police report can be made online at police.gov.sg or at any police station. Call 999 if someone is in danger, if it is an emergency, or if the scam is happening right now. Leave a blank line for the bank's reference number so it gets written down during the call.
Write the evidence checklist in short lines: screenshots of chats and profiles, phone numbers with dates and times, the account numbers the money went to, links and app names, transaction records, and the bank reference number. Evidence has to be saved before anyone is blocked or anything is deleted, so end the section with one line in bold, in plain words: save first, block later.
The clean-up section is a numbered sequence taken from Lesson 8.3, Secure your logins and watch for recovery scams. Change (1) any password that was shared or typed into a fake page, then (2) email, (3) banking, (4) Singpass and (5) anything else that shares a password. Add one line about removing apps you don't recognise and checking app permissions.
Finish with the recovery warning, in one or two sentences. Anyone who asks for a fee to recover lost money is running another scam, known as a recovery scam. Tell the reader to check any follow-up contact in the ScamShield app or by calling the ScamShield Helpline at 1799. The ScamShield website, scamshield.gov.sg, explains how to use the app to check a suspicious number, message or link.
Shu Fen, 33, wrote a card for themself and their parents. The banks are labelled Bank A and Bank B here; Shu Fen's real card names them in full. The card fits on one page with room to spare, and has five numbered steps plus a top heading and a bottom warning:
Top, in large text: "Scammed? Do these in order. Don't stop to feel bad." Step 1, freeze now: the Bank A hotline from the back of the card, written in full, with the app freeze under Profile, then Security. The Bank B hotline written in full, with the app freeze under Help, then Report fraud. Call from another phone if this one might be hacked. Step 2, tell the bank: the time, amount and recipient account of each transfer, with a blank line to write the reference number. Step 3, save evidence before blocking anyone: screenshots of chats and profiles, numbers that called, account numbers, links, transaction history. Step 4, report to police: police.gov.sg or any police station; if there is danger or it is happening now, 999. Step 5, change passwords in this order: whatever you gave away, email, Bank A, Bank B, Singpass, everything else. Remove apps you don't recognise. Bottom: "Anyone who wants a fee to get your money back is a scammer. Check them in the ScamShield app or call 1799."
When the draft is complete, read it as the most panicked person in your household would read it. Cut every word that is not an instruction or a number.
Then hand the card to the person who will use it and ask them to talk you through what they would do. Shu Fen gave theirs to their mother, who asked what "recipient account" meant, and Shu Fen changed it to "the account the money went to". Plain wording works better than jargon for someone reading in a panic. A card that makes sense to you but confuses the person using it is not finished, so fix anything your tester misunderstands and test again until they can follow every step.
Once your card passes that test, one question is left: where will it be when someone in your home needs it at 11pm?
Write your first-hour card, save it on your phone and print a copy for everyone at home.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).