Singapore Police Force’s Anti-Scam Centre joined hands with six banks — DBS Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, OCBC Bank, HSBC, UOB, and GXS — to prevent losses worth more than SGD 100 million. The joint operation, which took place between March 1 and April 30, disrupted more than 3,000 scams while saving 12,500 bank customers.
As per a police statement, over 16,700 SMSes were sent to the customers during the two-month-long operation.
Anti-Scam Centre and the banks used robotic process automation to help with the identification of victims of scams, which included job, e-commerce and investment scams.
The automation process allows the law enforcement to automate information sharing and processing, as well as send SMS alerts in bulk.
The texts sent to victims alerted them about the scams and urged them to stop any additional transfers, the police said. The system worked as most of the victims lodged complaints of scams after getting alerted, the statement added.
As precautionary measures, law enforcement recommended the victims to install the ScamShield phone app and use two-factor authentication for personal accounts which enabled transaction.