According to the Police Media release, they are warning a scam variant where the scammer pretends to be your friend or family and ask for money.
The Police said that they would contact the victim either with calls or messages and seek “financial assistance”.
The numbers are typically called from unknown numbers, after the victim picks up the phone they will not say who they are. When the victim asked the scammer, the scammer would typically use the following answer:
“Guess who am I? You can’t remember me?”.
They would then convince the victim that they are acquainted and upon establishing their relation the caller would say that they lost their handphone and calling them from a different number.
The scammer might not immediately ask the victim for money and would normally tell them to save the caller ID’s number as a phonebook contact and replacing the old contact.
After some time they would start asking for loans with the following excuses:
- asking for a loan due to financial difficulties
- asking for a loan because he/she got into trouble with the law.
Victims would then be asked to transfer the money to bank accounts belonging to unknown individuals, as provided by the callers. Victims would only discover that they had been scammed when they contacted their friends and realised that they had not contacted the victims nor changed their contact number.
Re-enactment (S for scammer, V for victim)
S: Hello brother how are you?
V: Who is this?
S: you forgot me ah?
S: You don’t know who I sound like meh?
V: You sound like andy
S: ya la, I’m andy
S: I’m calling to tell you I lost my phone, this is my new number, please save it
V: Ok
S: Catch up soon!