SINGAPORE: In cases where potential victims of scams refuse to believe they have been targeted and nevertheless insist on transferring money, police could be empowered to block such transfers.

New legislation has been proposed to allow police to order banks to restrict a potential scam victim’s banking transactions, including online banking, PayNow, and automated teller machines (ATMs).

This way, police can better protect targets who refuse to believe they are being scammed, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in a press release on Monday (Nov 11).

The Anti-Scam Protection Bill was previously introduced to Parliament by Minister of State for the Interior and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling.

In some scam cases, victims were informed by police, banks or family members that they were being scammed, but proceeded with the money transfers anyway, the MHA said .

“Currently, the police have no power to prevent victims from transferring their money to fraudsters if the latter insist on doing so,” the ministry said.

The MHA conducted a public consultation on the bill via the REACH website from August 30 to September 30 this year. He also organized group discussions with representatives of different age groups.

“Overall, respondents supported the Bill and provided their suggestions and comments on the proposals, which we took into account where appropriate,” MHA said.

SELF-MADE TRANSFERS

Despite protective measures and considerable public education efforts, the number of scam cases in Singapore involving the voluntary transfer of money from the victim to the perpetrator remains high, the MHA noted.

In the first half of this year, 86 percent of reported scams were the result of voluntary transfers.

“The scammers did not take direct control of the victims’ accounts, but manipulated the victims into transferring their money to the scammers,” MHA explained.

The proposed law will give police the power to issue restriction orders to banks and stop individuals’ transactions if there are reasonable grounds to believe they will make transfers to a fraudster.

This will involve the seven domestic systemically important banks (DSIBs) – DBS, OCBC, UOB, Citibank, HSBC, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank – which handle most consumer deposits in Singapore.