Speech by Mr Goh Pei Ming, Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Social and Family Development, at SICW 2025

Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information

Partners in our shared mission to combat scams,

1.              Thank you for joining this essential discussion on public-private collaboration in our fight against scams.

Global Scourge of Scams

2.         Scams have evolved into a global concern of staggering proportions. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that global scam losses amount to over $1 trillion US Dollars annually - that's almost twice of Singapore's GDP.

3.         In Singapore, scams are an urgent national priority. Last year, scam losses amounted to a record $1.1 billion Singapore dollars. The true devastation of scams isn’t just reflected in the financial loss - the headline figure alone - scams rob victims of their dignity, inflicting irreparable psychological wounds.

4.         And, we have seen scams destroy families. Retirees lose entire life savings in a matter of days. In a case reported in 2023, a 65-year-old retiree transferred over a million Singapore dollars to an acquaintance she met on Facebook, thinking that it was for a legitimate project. She not only wiped out 40 years of her life savings in 15 days, but also took out a further bank loan and borrowed money from her son to pay the scammer.

5.         And stories like these are not isolated; she is not alone. There are many others like this, where victims’ lives are demolished.

6.         The ripple effects extend even further. While societies embrace technology and try to go digital, exploiting and fully maximising one digital can bring, scams can erode trust, like what Minister said earlier - trust in our Government, in our digital systems, in our policies. People are worried about falling prey and because of that, they become more hesitant to adopt new technologies, new communications platforms, new digital banking solutions for example. And this can lead to not just digital exclusion but in fact, also social exclusion.

7.         I have met in my visits, talking to residents, that our seniors themselves are reluctant to download any legitimate mobile application, even the ones endorsed by the Government, because they just cannot trust and they think there is too much to lose, and they cannot recover. And because of that, we find that scams have caused our society to dial back in terms of how fast we can otherwise progress.

8.         Just as worrying, as mentioned, scams can erode trust - fundamental trust - in Government, in public institutions, and recently we have seen increasingly Government Official Impersonation Scams, and through that affecting basic trust on what the Government is providing, or who the Government is in general can be compromised. This trust, once eroded, is very difficult to rebuild.

Challenges in dealing with scams

9.         There are three aspects of scams that make them especially insidious:

            a. They are, first, borderless. Distance doesn’t matter. We have seen scam cases originating from the other side of the planet. This makes it especially difficult for us to go after the scam syndicates.

            b. Second, scams are increasingly sophisticated. They use the latest technologies, they use AI to perpetrate their crimes. Earlier this year, there was a report of how a finance director of an MNC almost lost $700,000 Singapore dollars to a scammer who used deepfakes to impersonate the company’s chief financial officer. And this, again, are colleagues who know each other quite well and such is the quality of the deepfake to pull off a scam of that magnitude.

            c. Third, scammers scale very quickly. With a few clicks, a scammer can reach out to thousands of potential victims.; they are able to mirror and map over. And every day, on the Government’s side, we leverage AI tools to review about 400,000 websites and disrupt about 1,000 scam websites. But this although sounds like a large number, is still unfortunately a fraction of what the overall global scam situation is.

10.       So, the combination of these three, in terms of borderless, sophistication and scale has created the perfect criminal enterprise. By leveraging the same technology that has advanced society, these scammers are able to maximise the impact, the reach, the scale of their crimes without even stepping into our jurisdictions.

Collective Efforts to Combat Scams

11.       As technology advances, we can fully expect that scams will only increase in efficiency as well as effectiveness. So, our work as scam defenders is cut out for us. We must work closely with governments around the world, share intelligence and run combined operations. We must likewise leverage heavily on technology to catch up on, and even try to get ahead of the perpetrators. We must be ready to innovate and to R&D, work closely with private sector partners, and quickly scale successful anti-scam solutions.

12.       This is why Singapore advocates a whole-of-society approach when it comes to fighting scams. Where Governments, the private sector and individuals, communities, all play a part.

13.       On the part of the Government, we play multiple roles as coordinator, regulator and enforcer.

            a. As coordinator, governments must setup the structures to orchestrate whole-of-society anti-scam efforts. In Singapore, the Inter-Ministry Committee on Scams, chaired by Minister Josephine Teo, brings together key stakeholders to address scam trends and implement counter measures. Operationally, the Anti-Scam Centre serves as the nerve centre for the whole-of-country effort, coordinating disruption and investigation efforts. We are heartened to see increasingly many countries setup anti-scam units which are crucial to strengthening international scam-fighting coordination.

            b. As regulator, governments must introduce effective laws. For instance, Singapore introduced the Online Criminal Harms Act to empower the Government to be able to direct online platforms to impose anti-scam measures through Codes of Practice and Implementation Directives. Implementation Directives, in particular, allow us to require urgent safeguards to be implemented, to be more effective in protecting our citizens, especially when the threat is significant and urgent.

            c. Lastly as enforcer, governments must collaborate to dismantle syndicates and enforce against scam actors. Project FRONTIER+ brings together the anti-scam units of 12 jurisdictions, and growing, to disrupt scams and improve cross-border asset recovery. Between May and June this year, the cross-border operation by FRONTIER+ led to the arrest of over 1,800 persons involved in scams. To strengthen the impact of our enforcement and deterrence efforts, the Ministry of Home Affairs will be proposing heavier penalties for scammers and their facilitators.

14.       The private sector plays a different but equally important role.

            a. Scammers exploit the services offered by the private sector, such as banking, telecommunication and online facilities, to perpetrate scams.

            b. Therefore, private sector entities must proactively detect, and takedown scams perpetrated on their platforms. Or better still, implement ex-ante safeguards to prevent scams on their platforms in the first place.

            c. I am glad the private sector - at least many of the private sectors partners I have interacted with - do not see this as a cost. They see this as an investment, a moral responsibility – to create a safe space for their customers, to maintain trust in the companies, and to build a long-term relationship with them. Especially in Singapore, where professional services, trust-based services, make up a significant proportion of our economy. This is a competitive advantage we must continue to protect and strengthen.

15.       I would like to thank our industry partners for your strong support to combat scams.

            a. Major retail banks now have sophisticated monitoring systems to block potential scam transactions. Telcos have deployed solutions to detect and block potential suspicious incoming calls and SMSes. And online platforms have invested heavily in user verification and removing scam content.

            b. In fact, your attendance here too, reflects the seriousness that you and your companies, your entities, place on cyber security and scam prevention.

Collaboration between the public and private sectors

16.       In our next bound, we must catalyse even stronger partnerships between the public and the private sectors. This will be a game-changer for us to be able to respond even more robustly.

17.       Let me highlight three specific areas where the public and private sectors can better collaborate.

18.       First, the cooperation between public and private sector partners to facilitate rapid disruption of scams and asset recovery. When it comes to responding to scams, every minute counts. Therefore, tightening the cooperation between partners, communications between partners is crucial.

19.       One way that we have explored is to bring the different partners together to be co-located in the same space, in the same room even, so that they are able to link up and respond quickly. For example, in Singapore’s Anti-Scam Command, we have co-located local bank representatives, and this allows us to work with multiple banks to stop and provide real-time assistance to the Police, and stop any illicit funds from leaving our shores as quickly as we can.

20.       Today, I would like to encourage even more industry partners to join our Anti-Scam Command. For instance, we are keen to co-locate with digital payment token service providers to improve the recovery of crypto assets. And to these digital payment token providers: don’t worry, we do not charge rent at the Anti-Scam Command.

21.       Second, the co-creation of anti-scam safeguards. Co-creation ensures that safeguards are effective and practical. The private sector has the technical know-how to come up with innovative solutions where regulators alone might not be able to develop. For example, the Government works closely with banks in Singapore’s Standing Committee on Fraud to devise measures to safeguard customers from digital banking scams. These includes anti-malware and anti-phishing controls, and notably, Money Lock. Money Lock allows for local bank customers to set aside funds that are protected and cannot be digitally transferred. As of June, this year, over 370,000 Singapore banking customers have safeguarded their money- over $30 billion dollars in savings using Money Lock.

22.       Third, facilitating data sharing. No single organisation, not even the Government, sees the complete picture. A scammer whose account is taken down by an online platform can very easily set up another account or on another platform somewhere else. For example, between 3 to 10 October 2025, just earlier this month, Carousell was able to identify more than 250 potential scam accounts using information provided by these calls, in terms of providing scam-tainted mobile phone numbers. So, using these phone numbers, Carousell was able to trace different accounts using this intelligence, and blocked those accounts.

23.       The Singapore Government Technology Agency (or GovTech) also joined the Global Signal Exchange (or GSE). This is important as we are then now able to share our intelligence with a global network of partners on the various scam accounts, SOPs, tactics, and take on more different sharing from other partners internationally. And this allows us to work even more robustly and be better informed as we undertake our fight. These efforts have improved our counter-scam sense-making, actively allowing us to remove scam infrastructure across our jurisdiction, before scams take place.

24.       Even while we press on with our anti-scam measures, no single, or even no collective scam safeguard can be 100% foolproof. A vigilant public, a well-informed public, is our last, and our most important line of defence.

            a. In Singapore, we strongly believe that the strength of our communities is important to help us raise our collective scam defences.

            b. Through the ScamShield mobile application, we crowdsource from the public, scam-related phone numbers, SMS accounts, emails – to prevent these accounts from reaching our citizens by calls, by SMSes and we provide a real-time warning.

            c. The app has been downloaded 1.34 million times, and this has helped us to build a collective community of scam defenders.

25.       I am heartened to also hear that industry partners have stepped up to educate their own users against scams. And this includes Google’s newly-launched “Be Scam Ready” game, and other interactive scam games developed by Eyeyah! and Meta, which leverages gamification to enhance scam awareness.

Conclusion

26.       Now, let me conclude. Our scam-fighting ecosystem is like a series of interlocking chains – and we are only as strong as our weakest link.

27.       And that is why we must endeavour to uplift the entire ecosystem through a whole-of-society approach where Government, the private sector, and our people, our community work closely, hand-in-hand together to strengthen these interlocking chains and to ensure that we protect, collectively, every last person, every last citizen.

28.       I look forward to hearing more from our panellists on what more we can do to further strengthen this partnership. Thank you.