71-Year-Old S’porean Loses S$45,000 In Savings After Downloading ‘Computer Clean-Up Tool’

Elderly Man Loses S$45,000 In Savings After Downloading ‘Computer Clean-up Tool’

With digital scams taking on so many forms, it is getting increasingly hard to not fall prey to them.

This is even more so the case for the elderly, who are usually (and understandably) not as tech-savvy.

The latest victim is a 71-year-old man from Singapore who lost S$45,000 in savings after downloading a suspicious ‘computer clean-up tool’.

Police suspect that the programme may have been used to steal his credit card details, and investigations are now underway.

Realised savings were lost after bank detected 47 suspicious transactions

71-year-old Mr Chen Shu (name transliterated from Mandarin) told Shin Min Daily News that he found out about his savings when the bank called him on 31 Jan this year.

Officials allegedly told him that his bank account had seen 47 suspicious transactions made since 2am that day. As a result, they froze the account and asked Mr Chen to check his balance.

It was then that the elderly man realised that these transactions did not exceed S$1,000 each, as transfers of a higher amount would have triggered an SMS notification to him.

If the bank had not notified him, he would likely have lost even more of his savings.

While the account initially had over S$90,000, the perpetrators had reportedly transferred out more than S$37,000 by the time it was frozen.

This prompted Mr Chen to check on his second account. To his horror, he found over S$8,000 wiped out across 27 transactions.

May have lost savings due to ‘computer clean-up tool’ accessing credit cards

Two weeks prior to the theft, Mr Chen apparently downloaded a computer hard disk clean-up tool and data optimisation programme after seeing an advertisement pop up.

At the time, he downloaded both programmes as his computer was slowing down.

However, he deleted them later the same day when he kept getting pop-ups.

In light of the events, authorities now suspect that the perpetrators may have used the programmes to steal both his credit cards’ details.

Forced to work again due to huge amount of savings lost

Mr Chen went on to reveal that the two accounts involved were the ones he accessed most frequently as they contained all his retirement funds.

Now that half of his savings are lost, the incident has left him anxious over his finances.

As such, he has had no choice but to return to the workforce.

At present, he is working part-time as an industrial management supervisor.

“Since it has happened, there’s nothing I can do about it. I just need to get back to work and earn some pocket money,” he said.

When contacted, police confirmed the case and said that investigations are currently ongoing.

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Featured image adapted from Shin Min Daily News and @impelling on Unsplash.