Thanks to an alert Western Union employee, a cyber extortion scam was foiled!

 

In most cases of cyber extortion scams, the victim is usually blackmailed into transferring money to the scammer. This is exactly what happened to a 23-year-old Chinese man who entered Western Union’s Ang Mo Kio Branch to make a money transfer.

He had fallen victim to a cyber extortion scam in which a woman befriended him on social media and subsequently convinced him to strip naked on a Skype video call. As soon as he was fully naked, the video call cut out and the woman blackmailed the man for a sum of money to avoid getting his video sent to all the victims’ Facebook friends.

Fearing the consequences, he proceeded to Western Union’s Ang Mo Kio Branch to make the money transfer. Fortunately for him, the Western Union staff, Miss Tessie Diaz’s suspicions were raised when she found out he was clueless about the person he was sending the money to.

 

“The amount of money does not matter, if you do not know the person, do not send the money because once you send it, you cannot get it back,” said Miss Diaz.

Western Union is one of the various stakeholders that the Singapore Police Force (SPF) regularly reaches out to. During these engagements, staff are kept informed on the latest scam techniques and advisories. Having undergone training on how to detect scams, Miss Diaz was convinced that her customer was being scammed. To prevent the man from falling further into the scam, she handed a crime advisory to him and advised him to seek help from the Police immediately.

 

Miss Diaz was awarded a certificate of appreciation from the SPF for her quick-thinking and help in foiling the online extortion scam.

 

The SPF’s mission of safeguarding Singapore every day cannot be accomplished by officers alone. The SPF will continue to engage the community to make Singapore a safe and secure home for all.