\n<\/p>\n
E-commerce scams were the most common type of scam, with cases rising 19.3 per cent to 3,865 cases in the first half of 2026. Losses from such scams also increased 18.9 per cent to about S$8.3 million.<\/p>\n
Pokemon trading cards remained the top item involved in such scams, with related cases increasing 116.8 per cent to 605 while losses surged 172.4 per cent to S$1.2 million.<\/p>\n
The police attributed the increase largely to a rise in pre-order scams, in which victims who found listings for Pokemon cards or other collectables on platforms such as Carousell paid either a deposit or the full price, months away from the promised delivery date.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Victims only realised that they had been scammed when they failed to receive the products by the promised date, or when they came across online posts from other buyers who had been scammed by the same seller,” said SPF.<\/p>\n
Investment scams, meanwhile, caused the greatest financial damage, with victims losing S$169.8 million across 2,256 cases in the first half of the year.<\/p>\n
While the number of investment scams fell 16.2 per cent, losses declined by a more modest 5.1 per cent.<\/p>\n
Police have observed a new trend where scammers impersonate entities such as National University of Singapore (NUS) and online brokerage Moomoo in online advertisements offering free investment tips or strategies.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictims who expressed interest by leaving their contact details would be contacted by scammers and invited into WhatsApp chat groups masquerading as ‘investment learning communities’ or redirected upon clicking the advertisements to contact scammers via a phone number and invited to join these chat groups,\u201d police said.<\/p>\n
Within those chat groups, scammers posing as mentors would provide apparently reliable investment tips and stock picks, while others posing as group members would endorse the \u201cgood advice\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
E-COMMERCE SCAMS E-commerce scams were the most common type of scam, with cases rising 19.3 per cent to 3,865 cases in the first half of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--VWtxuQme--\/c_crop,h_843,w_1500,x_0,y_157\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2022\/08\/15\/istock-1371885631.jpg?itok=nM5hvw5C","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1078,5184,4826,2455,22],"class_list":["post-79704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-cases","tag-fall","tag-losses","tag-scam","tag-singapore","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79704","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=79704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}