Man trolls scammer claiming to be from DBS and leaves him spewing vulgarities

A man decided to give a scammer a taste of his own medicine by pretending to fall for his ruse.

Stomper SinghIsKing said he received a WhatsApp call from someone claiming to be from DBS Bank on Feb 13, at 12.51pm.

The call was from a foreign number starting with +92, the country code for Pakistan.

SinghIsKing, who is sharing the incident now after returning from a holiday, said: "The caller claimed to be from DBS Bank and said my account had been suspended."

Aware that this was a scam, he decided to play along and started recording the conversation.

(The Stomper edited the audio call into a video. Vulgarities have been censored by Stomp.)

During the call, SinghIsKing can be heard dramatically exclaiming, "Oh my god! What am I supposed to do now?" after being told that there were issues with his bank account.

The caller replied, "We are going to update your accounts," and asked for personal information.

Undaunted, SinghIsKing proceeds to weave a long tale about his family history and how he was born in "the land of the river flowing of Singapore".

Sniggering can be heard in the background, but the caller does not appear to notice.

After asking for SinghIsKing's passport number or "Singapore ID", the caller also asks if the Stomper does online banking and requests for his username.

SinghIsKing replies, "Sappidonttrytoscamme," which he spells out before asking the caller, "Can you read the whole thing?"

The caller gives no indication about whether "sappi don't try to scam me" is an odd username or if he senses anything amiss by this time.

Instead, he goes on to ask for SinghIsKing's password.

The Stomper spells out "c***head" and the caller, finally realising that he has been tricked, starts to hurl vulgarities.

SinghIsKing told Stomp: "On a more serious note, if older people were to encounter such calls, they might divulge their personal info and get their entire savings wiped out in a second by these ruthless scammers."

Unfortunately, not everyone is as well-informed as SinghIsKing about these scams.

Stomp earlier reported on two separate cases where a 38-year-old woman lost her lifelong savings of almost $60,000 and a 60-year-old widow who had her life savings of $54,000 wiped out in similar scams.

In both instances, both victims had received Viber calls informing them that their DBS accounts were being hacked.

Members of the public are advised to adopt the following crime prevention measures:

• Beware of unsolicited messages or calls from persons impersonating as staff from banks. Scammers may use Caller ID spoofing technology to mask their actual phone number to display the bank’s number and logo as the profile picture on mobile applications such as 'Viber' and 'WhatsApp'.

• Do not disclose your internet banking details such as account username or Personal Identification Number (PIN) to anyone through phone, email or SMS. Banks and government agencies will never ask you to disclose your internet banking details to them.

• Do not respond to digital token authentication requests via phone calls if you did not initiate any internet banking transaction. Do not authorise any suspicious authentication request.

• If you receive a suspicious call purportedly from your bank, hang up and call the hotline published on the bank’s website to verify the authenticity of the request. Do not call the number provided by the caller.

Those who wish to provide any information related to such scams may call the police hotline at 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness.

For urgent police assistance, please dial '999'.

To seek scam-related advice, you may call the anti-scam helpline at 1800-722-6688 or go to www.scamalert.sg.