News

Diligent OCBC Staff Stopped Man From Becoming An Accomplice In A Scam

2017-08-30 , 10:46 am

Have you heard of money mule scams?

If you’re not, here’s a quick run-through: instead of being scammed of YOUR money, you HELP to launder other individuals’ scammed money.

How does it work? An anonymous or impersonating source transfers money to you, gives you some bullshit reason and wants you to either transfer to another account (chain link) or withdraw it and pass it to a middleman.

Sounds simple and legit, doesn’t it? Nobody would ever know.

Unless there’s Batman.

Who knew that he would ever be working at an OCBC branch?

Hero that we need, but don’t deserve

Meet bank teller, Victor Lo.

On Aug 2, when a male customer in his 40s walked in to withdraw over $36,000 “in the largest possible denomination” in cash, Batman- I mean Victor knew something was up.

The bank teller instantly asked for the reason for the withdrawal, and the man got defensive, stating that he had borrowed the money from a friend to purchase a car.

However, there were no supporting documents to back it up.

According to Mr Lo, “He was awkwardly silent but seemed to have all the answers ready, as if he had been coached.”

Victor sounded out his senior colleagues, Ms Kueh and Ms Chung aka Catwoman and Wonder Woman, to perform checks and successfully stalled him for nearly two hours.

And to show that they’re masters of paperwork, they used the rule ‘higher clearance is required for huge withdrawal amounts’ as an excuse. Legit enough.

The female heroes found out that the money had been sent to the man’s account just days before, and it was an abnormal spike in the account balance.

According to Ms Chung, “We’ve heard about money mule cases, and the reason he gave is also commonly used. So we suspected something might have been wrong.”

Ms Kueh contacted OCBC’s Fraud Risk Management team swiftly and was encouraged to cease the transaction entirely. The bank then made a police report.

Police Investigations

The case is still ongoing, but the Police have dug out findings that suggest the victim had been approached by an “Interpol undercover officer”. The “officer” had ordered the man to withdraw the $36,000 and pass it to another “officer”, or face money laundering charges.

The $36,000 might have been transferred into the man’s account by a female who might have been a money mule victim herself too.

Appreciation

Unlike Gotham, we actually value our heroes, and our trio of detectives here have been presented certificates of appreciation from the Singapore Police Force on August 29.

Thoughts

These three individuals have shown us that we can always help each other out, even if it’s not in a generic way.

They didn’t just go with the flow and let the transaction go through. They actually analysed and stopped the transaction.

They saved him from potential guilt trips and misery, all because they were alert, sensed something was wrong and jumped into action.

I would like to say that we should all emulate their example, but honestly, we are Singaporeans.

Just do what you’re supposed to do, nothing more.

So let’s just hand our heroes their pedestal and hope more will step up and perform such heroic acts, huh?

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