How I thwarted a 4-year love scam

“The staff at the bank here are saying that you’re a scammer.”

Teary-eyed, the customer, who was speaking to her “husband” over the phone, looked visibly distressed.

We were sitting in a private booth at the DBS Plaza Singapura branch, where she had come in earlier, trying to make an SGD 10,000 transfer to another account.

The bank teller who attended to her realised that the recipient’s name she gave did not match the name associated with the account.

She was getting increasingly agitated at the counter, so I stepped in to investigate as a Deputy Service Manager (DSM).

“Why are you stopping me from making the transfer? This is my money,” she questioned as I arrived, clearly exasperated.

Scam cases were on the rise, so I wanted to investigate her situation further before allowing the transfer.

I brought her to a quiet booth within the branch to give her privacy.

Realising she was from the same hometown as me in the Philippines, I switched from English to our shared dialect, and slowly, she began to open up about her relationship with this man.

She pulled up his Facebook profile on her phone - he was strikingly handsome. His profile listed that he was from Italy.

He had made the first move, and reached out to her over Facebook messenger. Over the course of four year, they spoke incessantly over text or voice call, and eventually came to address each other as husband and wife.

He’d send frequent selfies and picture updates of his day, but she would never see his face in real time.

One day, he told her the good news: he was to arrive in Singapore, and they could finally live out their lives together.

Then came the bad news: he was detained at Singapore customs on arrival, and thrown into Changi prison.

The SGD 10,000 was to be his bail money. This was the first time he’d asked for money.

However, the account to transfer the money to was a personal account, and not a government account usually associated with bail money.

Her phone buzzed and lit up with messages from him. I gently added that inmates aren’t given free internet access and use of their phones.

Incredulous, she picked up her phone and called him. He picked up immediately.

“Who are you going to believe? Him or me?” he challenged.

His voice, slightly muffled over the loudspeaker of her phone between us, had a strong African accent.

I felt goosebumps - Nigerian love scams had made the news recently, and it seemed I was listening to a scammer in real time.

“Go to their main branch, MBFC (Marina Bay Financial Centre)!” His tone was increasingly angry and frantic, as if knowing the jig was up.

She ended the call, her face softening, and thanked me profusely for preventing the transfer.

In most instances, victims visit us in distress after they’ve made the transfer, so we were very lucky we managed to thwart the scam before any money was lost this time.

After she left, I quickly sent out an island-wide email blast to all our branches to notify them of this case, and to prevent the transfer if she were to show up.

I’ve been working at DBS for over 15 years, and have seen scams evolve and become more sophisticated. We’re kept abreast of the latest tactics through circulars sent out by the bank to all the branches.

As I wrote up this case for one of the circulars, I received a reply to the query I’d sent earlier to the MBFC branch, asking if this customer had paid them a visit.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t.”

• Luisito Lopez, Deputy Service Manager, DBS Plaza Singapura Branch