Imagine you’re just sitting down at home, watching the next episode of Tiger King for the tenth time when you receive a call from an unknown number.
Worried because it might be MOH officers calling you as you might have come in contact with a COVID-19 patient, you answered the phone.
It is, indeed, MOH officers.
Your heart sank; is the food at the quarantine facility going to be as goody as the GrabFood delivery you have every meal? Would there be Netflix there? And most importantly; would there be air-conditioner?
But no; the MOH officers said they have seized COVID-19 contraband medicine registered under your name.
Wait, that escalated fast.
And because you’ve downloaded the Goody Feed app and read the important articles, even those that are not shown in Facebook, you know that a spoofed call from overseas would have the “+” sign in front of the number…but that’ll start only on 15 April 2020.
Still, something’s wrong because for a start, why is the Chinese police officers asking for your Internet banking credentials, and why is it in Chinese?
So you know it’s a scam call and therefore reply, “大便好吃吗？(how does shit taste like?)”
Police: Scammers Are Pretending to be MOH Officers & Claiming You Have Covid-19 Fake Medicine
As you’d know, from 15 April 2020, local numbers that have the “+” prefix are most likely scam calls.
But now, the + prefix could still be a legit call from a local number.
The police have just issued an advisory, saying that scammers now pretend to be MOH employees who’d then transfer the call to “Chinese police” that is investigating Covid-19 contraband medicine registered under the victims’ names.
From then, the “victims would be duped into believing that their identities had been misused and that they needed to provide personal information such as NRIC, passport details and Internet banking credentials for investigation in order to absolve themselves from any criminal offence.”
They added, “The victims were also instructed not to disclose any information, and were asked to contact the ‘Chinese police’ on a daily basis.”
Surprisingly, victims have lost $110,000 to this scam since March.
Now, while you can’t leave your house, you can still call make some calls to verify if a caller is indeed a scammer.
To verify if a call is indeed coming from MOH, call 1800-333-9999.
To check if a call is a scam, call the anti-scam helpline at 1800-722-6688.
In the meantime, since you can’t leave the house, check out a few anti-scam videos we’ve done with the SPF, and do subscribe to our YouTube channel because we’ve just filmed a video about scams (before CB period lah) and would be uploading it in our channel soon!
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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