SINGAPORE – A 44-year-old man has been charged over his alleged involvement in a government official impersonation scam that

saw an elderly woman almost lose $180,000

.

On Sept 1, Malaysian national Jong Yew Sin was handed one charge of abetment by conspiracy to fraudulently use as genuine a forged document purported to be a valuable security and another charge of fraudulent possession.

His case was adjourned for investigations to be completed, with the next court hearing scheduled for Sept 29.

On Aug 30, the police responded to a call for assistance from UOB regarding a suspicious over-the-counter cash cheque withdrawal request by Jong at one of its branches.

Within 30 minutes of the report, the police identified Jong and arrested him.

Preliminary investigations revealed that he had allegedly tried to facilitate the encashment of a cash cheque totalling $180,000. The cheque was linked to a report about the impersonation of a government official, supposedly from the Ministry of Law.

The victim, a 65-year-old woman, was told on Aug 29 that she had been implicated in a case of money laundering. The scammer convinced the woman to transfer all her funds from various bank accounts to her UOB account for “investigation purposes”.

She was also told that the money would be returned once investigations were over.

The woman complied with the scammers’ instructions, transferring around $40,000 to an unknown OCBC Bank account and handing over five pre-signed blank cheques to an unknown person posing as an investigation officer who met her near her home on Aug 30.

Jong had supposedly been instructed by a scam syndicate to receive one of the victim’s pre-signed cheques from an unknown person and later encash the cheque at UOB’s main branch at Raffles Place.

During the arrest, Jong was found with a cash cheque and two unidentified Malaysian UOB ATM cards.

Jong had allegedly been recruited by an overseas scam syndicate to collect and deliver cash in Singapore.

The mid-year scam statistics published on Aug 30 showed government official impersonation scams as an area of concern in the first half of 2025. The

number of such cases nearly tripled,

from 589 in the first half of 2024 to 1,762 in the first half of 2025.

Victims of government official impersonation scams lost $126.5 million in the first six months of 2025, up from the $67.2 million lost during the same period in 2024.

The police reminded the public that government officials will not ask for personal information over the phone or for money. Government officials will also not transfer calls to the police or ask the public to install apps from unofficial app stores.

In the first half of 2025, more than $456 million was lost to scams, with almost 20,000 cases reported in Singapore.

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