Elderly Woman Scammed of $100K By Fake Shopee, Bank & MAS Officer

Some scammers have reached a new low, as if they weren’t already malicious enough for sending so many of us fake Labubus after being paid a hefty sum for them.

Here’s What Happened

A 65-year-old elderly woman (who had declined for her name to be revealed) lost S$100,000 after being tricked to transfer the money to a GXS account, in an elaborate scam involving fake Shopee, bank, and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) officers, Shin Min Daily News reported.

It was just four days after she retired when, on 9 January 2025, she received a phone call from a person claiming to be a Shopee customer service officer.

The caller informed her that she had yet to pay an “insurance” fee for her Shopee account. According to her interviews with Shin Min, the woman did not even have a Shopee account, hence she requested for the fee to be voided.

The caller then transferred the call to a man named Jason, who was under the guise of a staff member from UnionPay.

Jason later contacted the woman again via a WhatsApp call. As the profile picture displayed for his account was indeed the UnionPay logo, the woman was convinced that his identity was legitimate.

He claimed that her bank account was involved in illegal money laundering, hence the situation needed to be handled by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Afterwards, another account with the official MAS logo as its profile picture called the woman via WhatsApp. The fake “MAS officer” told her that she would be contacted again by Jason, who would help her resolve the problem.

Indeed (perhaps the only truthful thing that these scammers have said throughout this scheme), Jason called the woman again, instructing her to transfer her money to a GXS account, so as to “secure” the amount.

The woman heeded his instructions, downloading the GXS app, setting up an account, and linking her United Overseas Bank (UOB) account containing her life savings to it.

The next thing she remembers is receiving emails stating that two transactions, one of S$75,000 and the other of S$25,000, had been made from of her UOB bank account to the GXS account.

She is still unsure as to why such a huge sum could be transferred out of the account, as she had implemented a limit of S$5,000, and is awaiting a reply from the bank.

There were three other transaction attempts, which were unsuccessful, as there was simply no more money remaining in the account.

With the help of her niece, she checked her GXS account, only to find that all the money had already been transferred out from there.

The woman mentioned that she was planning to place that sum of money in a Time Deposit account, presumably to fund her retirement through interest earnings.

Family Members’ Attempts to Stop Her Were Unsuccessful

According to her sister, whom the woman lived with, she was on the phone with the scammers for several hours straight, and did not even have dinner because of that.

Despite repeated requests for her to hang up, her sister said that the woman appeared to be hypnotised, and continued to follow the scammer’s instructions.

Her sister then called their niece for help. At around 10pm, their niece arrived. However, the woman refused to listen to both of their advice and did not believe that she was being scammed.

At this point, the woman was attempting to log in to her other bank account.

Finally, both of them helped her hang up the phone, before she managed to remember the details of her other bank account and log in to it–a silver lining in this entire incident.

Don’t Scoff, You May Be Next

While this may appear to be a scam that anyone else would have been able to see through, these scammers are getting more and more skilled–not just technically, but in terms of emotionally manipulating victims as well.

During her interview with Shin Min, the woman said that she had fallen for the con as the scammers had sounded very serious, causing her to fear that her money was truly at risk of being lost to the “money laundering” situation, thus blindly following their instructions in the panic of the moment.

Furthermore, they were continuously contacting her, leaving her with no time to verify their identities.