{"id":58067,"date":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=58067"},"modified":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:31:15","slug":"at-least-s3-6-million-lost-in-investment-scams-involving-chat-groups-since-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=58067","title":{"rendered":"At least S$3.6 million lost in investment scams involving chat groups since May"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>SINGAPORE: Victims have lost at least S$3.6 million (US$2.8 million) since May this year to investment scams involving chat groups that claimed to offer free opportunities to learn investing.<\/p>\n<p>At least 48 cases have been reported since last month, the police said in an advisory on Thursday (Jun 4).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This scam variant involves luring victims using fake social media advertisements that purportedly offer opportunities to learn about investing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Those who expressed interest would be invited to join a WhatsApp chat group, where scammers posed as &#8220;mentors&#8221;, providing advice or &#8220;bonuses&#8221; to entice the victims to start investing.<\/p>\n<p>Other &#8220;members&#8221; in the chat groups would also share screenshots of purported trading profits, the police said.<\/p>\n<p>Victims would then be instructed to create investment accounts through fraudulent websites or by downloading fraudulent applications from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.<\/p>\n<p>The victims would then be asked to transfer money to specified bank accounts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In some cases, victims were instructed to hand over cash or gold to unknown persons posing as staff from the investment company, who would provide victims with &#8216;invoices&#8217; upon receipt of the valuables,&#8221; the police added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.channelnewsasia.com\/singapore\/investment-scam-whatsapp-chat-group-free-lessons-6162416\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SINGAPORE: Victims have lost at least S$3.6 million (US$2.8 million) since May this year to investment scams involving chat groups that claimed to offer free&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--RuAaAvFa--\/c_crop,h_481,w_856,x_0,y_20\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/04\/image_-_2026-06-04t201818.037.png?itok=9G7Ecnin","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12310,5738,1606,2393,4883,787,24160,4880],"class_list":["post-58067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-chat","tag-groups","tag-investment","tag-involving","tag-lost","tag-million","tag-s3-6","tag-scams","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}