{"id":96400,"date":"2026-10-29T21:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=96400"},"modified":"2026-10-29T21:50:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:50:00","slug":"singapore-based-petrochemical-firm-recovers-us12-8-million-lost-in-business-email-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=96400","title":{"rendered":"Singapore-based petrochemical firm recovers US$12.8 million lost in business email scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>SINGAPORE: <\/span>A Singapore-based petrochemical company has recovered the full US$12.8 million (S$16.4 million) it lost after scammers tricked it into transferring the money to a fraudulent bank account in Cambodia.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>The funds were recovered through efforts involving the Singapore Police Force&#8217;s (SPF) Cyber Command, OCBC and the Cambodian National Police, SPF said on Thursday (Oct 29).<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>Preliminary investigations revealed that the company received an email from its business counterpart on Oct 1 containing revised payment instructions directing payment to a new bank account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>The company identified a discrepancy in the payment documents but the scammers subsequently provided an authorisation letter bearing the business counterpart\u2019s company signature and stamp to make the revised instructions appear legitimate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>The company transferred US$12.8 million to the new bank account on Oct 13. The authorisation letter was later determined to be fraudulent, police said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>The scam was discovered on Monday, when the business counterpart said that it had yet to receive the payment. The company then made a police report.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>After receiving the report, cyber command officers engaged with the Cambodian police and coordinated recovery efforts with OCBC. The full amount was eventually traced and recovered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>The police advised businesses to remain vigilant against business email scams and to adopt measures such as verifying changes in payment instructions, educating employees and utilising email protection software.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.channelnewsasia.com\/singapore\/business-email-scam-us128-million-cambodia-petrochemical-6502556\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n<p><center><script>\n  atOptions = {\n    'key' : 'ab8cc34fbebd96e6c135978b4baca540',\n    'format' : 'iframe',\n    'height' : 90,\n    'width' : 728,\n    'params' : {}\n  };\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highrevenueformat.com\/ab8cc34fbebd96e6c135978b4baca540\/invoke.js\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SINGAPORE: A Singapore-based petrochemical company has recovered the full US$12.8 million (S$16.4 million) it lost after scammers tricked it into transferring the money to a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1107,12044,1608,4883,787,32251,32252,2455,13763,32253],"class_list":["post-96400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-business","tag-email","tag-firm","tag-lost","tag-million","tag-petrochemical","tag-recovers","tag-scam","tag-singaporebased","tag-us12-8","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96400","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=96400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}