13 people, including 16-year-old teen, arrested over banking-related malware scams

An island-wide enforcement operation last month saw 13 people being arrested for their suspected involvement in a recent spate of banking-related malware scam cases.

Two women and 10 men, aged between 19 and 35, as well as a 16-year-old youth were nabbed in the operation conducted between June 26 and June 30.

Another nine men and a woman, aged between 17 and 65, are assisting in investigations.

The police said that since January 2023, they have received increasing reports informing that malware was used to compromise Android mobile devices, resulting in unauthorised transactions made from the victims' bank accounts.

The transactions were made even though victims did not divulge their Internet banking credentials, One-Time Passwords (OTPs) or Singpass credentials to anyone.

In these cases, the victims responded to advertisements (e.g. on cleaning services, pet grooming, food items such as seafood and groceries, etc.) on social media platforms like Facebook.

They were then instructed by the scammers to download an Android Package Kit (or APK) from a non-official app-store to facilitate the purchase, leading to malware being installed on the victims' mobile devices.

The scammers then convinced the victims via phone calls or text messages to turn on accessibility services on their Android phones.

"Doing so weakens the phones’ security and allows the scammer to take full control of the phones," police added.

"This means that the scammers can log every keystroke and steal banking credentials stored in the phones and allows the scammer to remotely log in to the victims' banking apps, add money mules as payees, raise payment limits and transfer monies out to money mules. The scammers can further delete SMS and email notifications of that bank transfer to cover their tracks."

During the five-day operation, officers from the the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and Police
Intelligence Department (PID) mounted simultaneous island-wide operations and arrested the 13 suspects.

Case exhibits seized. Photo: Singapore Police Force

Preliminary investigations revealed that seven men, two women and the 16-year-old youth had allegedly facilitated the scam cases by relinquishing their bank accounts, Internet banking credentials and or disclosing Singpass credentials for monetary gains.

The other three men are believed to have withdrawn money from some of the money mules’ bank accounts and handed the money to unknown people.

Police investigations are ongoing.