People lost about $10 million to scammers posing as employees of WeChat, other Chinese companies
At least 443 cases of impersonation scams featuring Chinese companies were reported since Aug 28 with people losing a total of at least $9.6 million, said the police on Nov 11.
The scam victim would receive an unsolicited phone call from someone impersonating a staff member of a Chinese company such as Tencent, WeChat or UnionPay.
The scammer would typically inform the victim that a subscription they had previously signed up for - such as insurance coverage, WeChat anti-harassment application, WeChat subscription - is about to expire.
The scammer would then tell the victim that the fees would be automatically deducted from their bank accounts linked to the platform unless the victim cancelled the subscription.
To do so, the victim had to verify their identities and bank accounts by providing their personal information and making monetary transfers to various bank accounts.
In some of the cases, the scammer would increase their credibility or pressure the victims by doing any of the following:
- Redirecting victims to speak with another scammer impersonating as a customer service staff member via WhatsApp or a video conferencing application.
- Redirecting victims to a phishing website with live customer service chat function. In some of the cases, the phishing website was designed to look like UnionPay's website.
- Showing victims a fake customer service staff's employment pass from the purported company.
- Showing victims fake documents of their alleged subscriptions, with the victims' personal information.
- Sending email purportedly from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that their financial accounts do not match the records maintained by MAS.
- Informing victims that their WeChat accounts had been frozen.
Victims were assured that their monies would be refunded upon successful verification.
In some of the cases, the scammer would guide the victim through WhatsApp's screen-sharing function to increase the bank transaction limit and perform the bank transfers.
Unbeknown to the victims, the WhatsApp screen-sharing function allows scammers to view their banking ID, password and one-time password.
Most victims would only realise that they had been scammed after making multiple monetary transfers without receiving the promised refunds.
