When the police told sisters Faith and Sarah Phua in April 2025 that their 75-year-old mother wanted to transfer $67,000 to an unknown account, they were shocked.
They confronted their mother, who admitted she wanted to send the money to tech billionaire Elon Musk, whom she believed needed help saving his company from ruin.
They were horrified to later learn that since 2022, their mother had been fooled by scammers who used artificial intelligence to impersonate Musk to talk to her.
Over three years, the elderly woman transferred $600,000 to the scammers.
The sisters spoke to The Straits Times at the Police Cantonment Complex in New Bridge Road on March 24.
Sarah Phua, 45, said: “My mum said Elon Musk needed her money to help his business as it was losing money. That was when we knew she had been brainwashed.”
The money she handed over to scammers was from her joint bank account with her husband, 83, and was the elderly couple’s life savings. It was also supposed to be used for her husband’s open-heart surgery in January.
To prevent the transactions from being flagged as suspicious, their mother would make multiple transfers of smaller amounts of $1,000 to $2,000 each time, said the sisters.
Faith Phua, 43, who works in the healthcare industry, said: “She refused to believe she was being scammed. She even told us Elon Musk had introduced her to his friends, Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg, and she was helping to manage their finances.”
Her older sister, a homemaker, said their mother claimed she was in contact with Musk’s sister and mother, who thanked her for helping out.
“It sounds unbelievable, but she really believed all that. Speaking to her, I could tell this was not the same person who raised us.”
Restriction order
As a last resort, the police in July 2025 issued a restriction order (RO) to the elderly woman, limiting her banking transactions and preventing her from draining her life savings.
She was the first person issued an RO since the Protection from Scams Act came into effect on July 1 that year.
