An elderly man in Singapore would have likely been scammed of S$150,000 if not for the vigilance of a bank employee.
Cheryl Wang, an employee in DBS Bank’s Anti-Scam team, picked up on the potential scam while on a call with the elderly customer.
The scammer was allegedly “coaching” the elderly man over another call, giving him answers to verification questions so he could ‘extract’ the sum of money from him.
DBS Bank shared about Cheryl’s experience dealing with the near-scam via a LinkedIn post on 28 April.
Being part of DBS’ Anti-Scam team, Cheryl’s job involves verifying potential scams with suspicious fund transfers.
Source: DBS Bank on LinkedIn
This particular case had alarm bells ringing as the elderly man had attempted to transfer S$150,000 to a new account. The man had been a DBS customer for decades and had never done something similar.
As a cautionary measure, Cheryl placed the man’s account on “no debit”, which restricted him from transferring money out of his account.
During the call, the man was able to answer any verification question thrown at him confidently. This caused Cheryl to grow suspicious as things were going “too smoothly”.
“Often, these calls can be unexpected to customers, and they’re usually rather tense when answering our verification questions,” she said.
After about 30 minutes, the elderly man begged Cheryl to “release” his account as he needed to make an “urgent payment” for his credit card bill.
Source: ValentynVolkov on Canva
This solidified Cheryl’s suspicions that the man was caught in a scam.
“My philosophy in this line of work is that no payment in life is ever urgent. There’s always time, or a grace period to make payments, especially a credit card bill,” she said.
After some reassurance from Cheryl, the man revealed there was a third party on the phone with them, helping him through the verification questions.
“What’s taking so long? Faster! Ask her to release your account,” the unidentified voice yelled through the man’s phone speakers.
Cheryl subsequently urged the man to lodge a police report on the suspicion of a possible scam threat.
The following day, the report came in, confirming Cheryl’s instincts.
“Knowing that I prevented customers from losing their hard-earned life savings truly gives me purpose, and keeps me going in this role,” she said.
Source: DBS Bank on LinkedIn
Cheryl noted that there has been a rise in cases where scammers are caught “coaching victims” into answering verification questions.
According to The Straits Times, the Singapore Police Force and several banks have partnered together in a bid to prevent scams in Singapore.
In a two-month operation, they managed to disrupt more than 3,000 scams and deterred losses of over S$100 million.
To restrict the amount of money scammers can steal, the police urged bank account holders to set limits for Internet banking, which includes PayNow.
Also read: The OCBC scam took my life savings, this is how I made my peace with it
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