SINGAPORE – More than US$6.6 million ($8.4 million) that a Singapore-based commodity trading firm lost to conmen in a business e-mail scam has been recovered, the police said.
The police worked with HSBC Singapore, the United Arab Emirates Interior Ministry, the Dubai Anti-Fraud Centre and the Royal Oman Police.
The police, in a statement on May 5, said a Singapore-based commodity trading firm lodged a report on April 30, after it was duped into transferring US$6.6 million to a fraudulent bank account in Oman.
Two days earlier, the firm got an e-mail that appeared to be from one of its suppliers.
However, the domain name of the e-mail was modified, with two letters moved around in such a way that it was virtually impossible to tell apart from the supplier’s real e-mail address.
Believing that the request was authentic, the firm’s employees began the process of transferring the full payment amount to the phoney bank account on April 29, the police said.
A day later, the firm’s employees found that they had been scammed after the genuine supplier told them that they had not changed their bank account.
