Singapore lost SGD 1.1 billion to scams in 2024: Police

Singapore: Singapore lost a staggering SGD 1.1 billion ($822 million) to scams last year, as cases surged by 10.6 per cent from the previous year, police said on Tuesday.

The total amount lost to fraudsters rose by 70.6 per cent from SGD 651.8 million in 2023, according to the annual statistics on scams and cybercrime released by the Singapore Police Force (SPF).

The total number of scam cases also increased by 10.6 per cent to 51,501 cases in 2024 from 46,563 in 2023.

Cryptocurrency losses made up about 24.3 per cent of scam losses last year, compared to about 6.8 per cent in 2023.

E-commerce scams were the top scam type flagged by the police, followed by job scams, phishing scams, investment scams and fake friend call scams.

A single malware-enabled scam case saw the loss of about SGD 125 million in cryptocurrency, according to statistics.

SPF noted that its Anti-Scam Command - which was set up in March 2022 - managed to recover more than SGD 182 million of scam losses in 2024, making the net loss about SGD 930 million.

Through "proactive interventions" with victims at various stages of being scammed, the Anti-Scam Command unit and its partners also averted at least SGD 483 million in potential losses, SPF added.

More than 70 per cent of the scam cases last year led to losses of less than SGD 5,000, the police said, adding that the median loss per case fell by 12.6 per cent from SGD 1,590 in 2023 to SGD 1,389 in 2024.

However, there was an overall increase in the total amount lost - driven by a small number of cases with "very high" losses.

Scam cases with losses of at least SGD 100,000 made up 3.3 per cent of the total cases last year but accounted for 70.8 per cent of the losses.

Four cases, in particular, accounted for SGD 237.9 million.

The police estimated that the amount lost in these four instances accounted for 21.4 per cent of the total scam losses in 2024.