Most Common Scams in Singapore In 2024 – How Singaporeans Can Protect Themselves

When something is too good to be true, be extremely wary. The sophistication, persistence and ingenuity of scam artists ensures they are a constant threat on multiple fronts, even to individuals who think they know better. 

Despite the numerous anti-scam methods implemented by the Singapore Police Force (SPF) over the years, the number of scams reported each year continues to grow, according to their latest Annual Scams and Cybercrime Brief 2024, released in late February 2025.

2024 saw a 10.6% increase in e-commerce scams, phishing scams, investment scams and government official impersonation scams over previous years. In 56.1% of the cases, the amount lost was less than $2,000.

According to SPF, the most common scams in 2024 (according to the number of cases reported) are e-commerce scams, job scams, phishing scams, investment scams and fake friend call scams.

#1 E-Commerce Scams

With the number of high profile concerts Singapore hosted last year, including multiple nights for the oversubscribed Coldplay Music of the Spheres World Tour and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, it’s unsurprising that concert tickets were the top item in e-commerce scams.

Though the SPF did not reveal the exact number of concert ticket scams, we know that one scammer, Foo Mei Qi, had taken $110,700 from 76 victims by pretending to sell tickets for Taylor Swift’s concerts on popular secondhand platform Carousell.

Many of Foo’s victims had transferred various sums of money before receiving the concert ticket. She would then cease contact with them after the money had been transferred.

In three additional cases, Foo sold counterfeit concert tickets for a total of $7,780, and her victims only learnt the tickets were not genuine on the day of the concert itself when they couldn’t enter the venue.

In total, there were a total of 11,665 e-commerce scams reported in 2024, with a total of $17.5 million lost, or an average of $1,508 lost per case.

Protect Yourself From E-Commerce Scams

Though e-commerce scams come in many forms, the basic precaution for scams are still valid: Don’t make payments for items before receiving them. Many e-commerce scams also occurred on messaging platforms like Telegram, where scammers can be anonymous and harder to detect and stop.

Many of these scams lured victims in with attractive deals and rare opportunities. With some extremely popular concert tickets sold out within days of release, scammers grabbed the opportunity to entice fans who were desperate for tickets. This made the victims more susceptible, and they did not think twice before transferring money to the scammer.

Read Also: 70% Of E-Commerce Scams In 2023 Happened On Facebook And Carousell. Here Are 4 Habits To Protect Yourself.

#2 Job Scams

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more people have discovered the value of working from home. Unfortunately, it is exactly this desire to earn an income through remote jobs that scammers are exploiting. In many cases, victims were tempted by the promise of a high salary for relatively simple work through scammers reaching out to them via unsolicited messages on WhatsApp and Telegram. 

At first, victims would earn commissions through basic tasks such as posting online reviews and completing surveys. After a short while, they would then be asked to transfer an amount of money to receive more jobs, which often promises higher commissions. After several rounds of doing this, the commissions would suddenly stop, or the victims would be unable to cash out their expected commissions. The scammers would often become uncontactable at this stage.

In total, 9,043 job scams were reported in 2024, a drop of 8.79% from the previous year. However, a total of $156.2 million was lost, an increase of 15.11% from 2023. The average amount lost per case was $17,281.

Protect Yourself From Job Scams

Job scams have many variants, but they all have one thing in common – after a while, victims are expected to transfer their own money to an unverified account. In many cases, a level of trust has already been earned by the scammers, or it is the greed of the victims that keeps them hoping for larger commissions.

There are no legitimate jobs that require you to transfer your own savings to an external partner and any role requiring you to do that should put you on alert.

#3 Phishing Scams

A total of 8,552 cases of phishing scams were reported in 2024. The total amount lost was $59.4 million. However, this number was skewed by a single case where $33.8 million worth of cryptocurrency was lost.

In this case, the victim saw an advertisement offering lucrative rewards while on a legitimate cryptocurrency wallet app. The advertisement directed the victim to a third-party site that was designed to look like the legitimate app. There, the victim provided their crypto wallet login credentials, and not long after, discovered unauthorised cryptocurrency transactions on their account.

If we put this one case aside, that means the average amount lost per phishing scam case is almost $2,994, still a high number, but closer to 2023’s average loss per case of $2,391.

Phishing scams are so varied and sophisticated that there are significant numbers of victims in all age groups. Most phishing scam victims, 42.2%, are aged between 30 and 49. These victims are usually the main targets because they have the most to lose when inadvertently revealing usernames, passwords, and banking credentials to scammers hiding behind phishing sites.

Protect Yourself From Phishing Scams

One should have a healthy scepticism regarding offers online that seem too good to be true, one should be more vigilant when it comes to sites that require login details and One-Time Passwords (OTPs). 

Look out for telltale signs that it is not the site it claims to be, such as the URL being different, and the links lead away from the site.

Read Also: 4 Internet Habits To Adopt To Prevent Scams

#4 Investment Scams

Perhaps the most egregious type of scam was the investment scam, which saw a 69.08% increase in cases reported from 4,030 cases in 2023 to 6,814 cases in 2024, with at least $320.7 million lost. This is the highest total amount lost in any type of scam in 2024.

Like job scams, investment scams often entice victims with the promise of high returns, much higher than they could earn through other channels. One prevalent investment scam involves being added to a WhatsApp or Telegram chat group without any warning. Within the “investment” chat group, there would be messages by other people in the group posting their “earnings” using what may or may not be legitimate screenshots of their accounts showing amounts of money. Victims would then be tempted by these messages and reach out to get further instructions on how to “invest”.

The victim would only realise they had been scammed when they could not withdraw their “earnings” despite having transferred funds to the scammers.

Unfortunately, many of the victims of investment scams are aged 50 and above, which suggests that this age group is more likely to have large amounts of funds available and are then tempted by the promise of higher returns on their funds.

Protect Yourself From Investment Scams

As with all investments, one should only invest what they are ready to lose, regardless of how low risk the investment claims to be. 

Furthermore, one should do their due diligence and make sure that the investment opportunity is genuine and more importantly, provides the kind of returns that they claim to be able to.

#5 Fake Friend Call Scams

In total, 4,179 fake friend call scam cases were reported in Singapore in 2024. The good news is that fewer people are falling for this type of scam in 2024, an almost 40% decrease from 2023. Nonetheless, it is still among the top 5 types of scams in Singapore by case reports.

In the most common variant of this scam, the scammer makes an unsolicited call from a unknown number to the victim. The scammer then pretends to be a friend of the victim with a new number, often expecting the victim to guess the identity of the scammer. Having earned some level of trust, the scammer then goes on to request for financial help. The victim would transfer the money to the unknown number, expecting it to go to their friend, but it does not.

Protect Yourself From Fake Friend Call Scams

If you see a number you don’t recognise, be on high alert. The only calls you get from numbers you don’t recognise tend to be either scam calls or sales cold calls, both of which you may probably want to avoid.

The post Most Common Scams in Singapore In 2024 – How Singaporeans Can Protect Themselves appeared first on DollarsAndSense.sg.