SINGAPORE — The police are alerting the public of a new scam variant on Google Search, whereby scammers dupe victims who search for bank contact numbers.
In a media release on Wednesday (19 January), the police said that at least 15 victims have fallen prey to such scams since December last year, with losses amounting to at least $495,000.
In these cases, the victims would search for the banks’ contact numbers via Google Search, as they wanted to seek their advice for various reasons. The scammers would post advertisements that would appear when the users search for such contact numbers.
The victims would see these scam ads appearing as the first few search results, providing a fake contact number for victims to contact.
Believing that these are bank hotlines, victims would call the number and speak to a scammer impersonating as a bank staff. After sharing the reasons for contacting the bank, victims would be informed that there are issues with their bank account, credit/debit cards or loan amount.
Police said in the media release that the scammer would then instruct the victims to temporarily transfer the funds to bank accounts provided, under the pretext of resolving the bank account or credit/debit card issue, or to make a payment for the outstanding loan.
In some cases, victims would receive SMS messages with headers spoofing that…
