SINGAPORE – For the first time in eight years, the number of scam cases in Singapore fell, from more than 50,000 in 2024 to 37,308 in 2025.
The amount lost to scammers also
dipped from the record high of $1.1 billion in 2024
to $913.1 million in 2025, the police said on Feb 25 as they released their annual scam statistics.
But a concerning trend emerged in 2025, with victims convinced to buy gold bars and hand them over to scammers, as these are harder for the authorities to track.
The police said there were at least 131 cases in 2025 involving victims handing over gold bars to scammers. Such cases were seen in government official impersonation scams, insurance services scams and investment scams.
Scammers would convince victims to buy gold bars and hand them over for “investigation or investment purposes”.
The police added that scammers seem to be shifting to gold as a payment method to avoid tightened anti-scam measures such as enhanced banking verification procedures and improved detection of mule accounts.
E-commerce scams were the most common scam type in 2025, with 6,703 cases reported and $16.7 million lost. The figures were down from the 11,665 cases and $17.5 million lost in 2024.
The police said Pokemon trading cards made up 13.6 per cent of all e-commerce scam cases and were the most common item involved in such scams.
e-commerce scams involving Pokemon trading cards
was at least $1.6 million.
More than half of Pokemon card scam victims were aged between 30 and 49 years old, while 40.8 per cent of victims were aged 20 to 29 years old.
The police said scammers exploited the growing demand for new and exclusive releases of Pokemon trading cards and rare cards with high resale value.
Despite the overall drop in scam cases, the number of government official impersonation scam cases more than doubled from 1,504 cases in 2024 to 3,363 in 2025. It was the fifth most common scam type in 2025.
The amount lost to such scams also rose significantly by around 60 per cent, from $151.3 million in 2024 to $242.9 million in 2025.
Nine out of 10 such cases involved victims falling for scammers impersonating local government officials, bank staff or financial institution representatives through calls, the police said.
These include scammers impersonating officers from the Singapore Police Force, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, Monetary Authority of Singapore and China government officials.
Scammers would first convince victims that there were suspicious transactions on their credit cards or insurance policies. The calls would then be transferred to fake government officials accusing victims of money laundering.
The victims would be told to transfer money to unknown accounts and hand over cash purportedly for investigation purposes.
Job scams were the third most common scam type in 2025, with more than 5,500 cases reported and $123.5 million lost.
