In Singapore, more than $2.7 billion was lost to scams in 2019.

To put that number in perspective, that would be the equivalent of 90 good-class bungalows, assuming each property is worth about $30 million.

The numbers are expected to rise further as victims lose a record of over $385.6 million in the first half of 2024.

Singaporean authorities have attempted to combat the scourge by introducing laws and regulations and running awareness campaigns.

In 2020, the National Crime Prevention Council partnered with the Singapore Police Force to launch an anti-scam campaign with the tagline “Locate the signs. Stop the crimes.“

It focused on educating the public on how to spot the various signs of a scam, including looking for deals that are too good to be true and e-commerce sellers that have not been verified.

The campaign received the refreshed slogan “I can ACT against scams” in 2023, with the acronym ACT highlighting how members of the public can add security features, check for signs and tell authorities and others about scams.

But scammers also read the news and notices and have repeatedly shown that they are able to adapt quickly and find new ways to bypass anti-scam checks.

By the time the notices on how to avoid the scams were introduced to the general public, scammers would have already come up with new tricks to make victims part with their money.

With new technologies and AI added to the mix, it becomes even harder for authorities to keep up.

Mr. Jorji Abraham, the CEO of Gasa, provided several examples of how anti-fraud measures have been thwarted.

He said that previously, the public was told they could tell if a website was secure by checking if it started with “https” instead of “http”, meaning the site was secured using a Secure Sockets Layer certificate ( SSL).

“But now SSL certificates are free and every scam site has an SSL certificate,” he said.