The officers explained that time was of the essence, as they needed to convince the victims they had been scammed so that they stop them from losing any more money.
As such, they said they will keep on trying till the victims come around, and have even gone so far as calling their uniformed counterparts from the neighbourhood police posts to show up as a way to reassure the victims.
Once trust has been established, ASP Lim said it will not be a “touch and go” situation, but a commitment to stay in communication with the victims till the case concludes.
For instance, if they determine that a victim is vulnerable, they will pull in additional resources from the community police unit — formed for the purposes of engaging members of the community — to conduct house visits to the victim.
In some cases, the officers said victims start harbouring suicidal thoughts when they realise that they have been scammed.
When this happens, the police will arrange for a counsellor to talk them out of entertaining such thoughts.
While the police did not go into details of how they managed to recover the 82-year-old woman’s savings, they said they took the extra step to ensure she would not lose them again.
Inspector Low said they escorted the woman to the bank so that she could deposit the cheque that contained her recovered savings and even got the bank’s employees to deactivate the woman’s online banking account to “prevent her from being scammed again in…
