Scams and cyber crimes in Singapore showed a declining trend in the first half of 2025 as compared to the first half of the previous year 2024 according to Singapore police force bulletin.
During the period January to June 2025, the number of scam and cybercrime cases decreased by 21.5% to 22,476 cases, compared to 28,625 cases in the same period in 2024.
During the first half of the year, however, the force saw the emergence of a new scam type insurance services scams. This emerged for the first time in 2025. There were 791 insurance services scam cases reported in the first half of 2025, with about S$21.3m ($16.6m) lost in total.
Under this scam type, scammers impersonate staff from insurance companies and claim that victims would have to pay for their supposed insurance packages or expiring trial subscriptions, unless they are cancelled. To proceed with the cancellation, victims are asked to verify their identity by sharing personal details and transferring money, with false promises of refunds after verification.
Impersonation scams involving callers posing as bank or financial institution representatives, and later as government officials, remained the most common scams.
Victims were often told their bank or insurance accounts were linked to suspicious transactions and then transferred to a second scammer claiming to be from an authority such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
According to the police force report social media, messaging platforms, phone calls and online shopping platforms were the top contact methods which scammers used to reach out to victims. Three products from Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) remain of particular concern, as they make up a significant proportion (37.3%) of total cases reported across all platforms exploited by scammers to contact victims.
TikTok, Telegram, and Carousell are platforms of concern too – the number of scam cases perpetrated through TikTok has more than doubled, and there remains a considerable number of scam cases perpetrated through Telegram and Carousell.