Online scammer gets ridiculed for broken English and unconvincing impersonation of DBS bank staff

To be fair, nobody’s expecting online scammers and swindlers to be paragons in the English language — but perhaps crafting proper sentences would help when impersonating a corporate representative. 

A woman recounted her experience with a scammer last Sunday (Sept 27) on the Complaint Singapore Facebook group, where she shared screenshots of her exchange with the other party. 

Impersonating a staff of DBS Bank, the fraudster contacted the woman on messaging app Viber (of all places) and tried to get her to do… something. The instructions weren't exactly clear from the scammer’s side of things, making it all seem confusing and absolutely unconvincing. 

From the screenshots of the chat, it would appear that “John Michael” wanted to inform the bank customer that her account was blocked for some reason and needed to be updated. The poor grammar and incoherent messages didn’t help, though. 

The woman did her best to play along, though it seemed that she too couldn’t comprehend to what the scammer needed her to do. 

In the end, “John Michael” finally made his intentions clear: the scammer wanted to obtain her passport number. Unfortunately, the swindler’s poor command of the English language proved to be his undoing — the so-called issue was apparently solved and the woman commended him for a job well done. 

Folks couldn’t help but ridicule the pitiful attempt at a bank account con.

On a serious note, though, the police have highlighted that banking-related phishing scams — in which scammers attempt to trick people into giving out personal information — have increased by over 2,500 per cent in the first half of this year. The total amount of money lost to these scams has increased by a whopping $3,507,000. 

The Singapore Police Force warned that messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Viber are commonly used by scammers to communicate with potential victims. 

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ilyas@asiaone.com