Police flag fraud uptick, esp. customer service-related phone scams

Police recorded a marked uptick in fake customer service fraud cases in the first 8 months of this year.

Police say these latest scam tactics have swindled victims including a housewife who lost more than 4 million dollars.

The housewife who was scammed out of more than 4 million dollars after she received a call posing as a Taobao customer service staffer.

The caller claimed her parcel was damaged so she could receive compensation, but they needed to verify her bank account details first.

The victim was then lured into logging into a fake online banking website and setting up a new payee, before being instructed to input the so-called "verification code" which activated money transferral to the scammers.

She ultimately lost upwards of 4.4 million dollars.

Police say this new scam tactic mostly involves phone calls rather than phishing messages as it is easier to manipulate the recipients' emotions and actions.

Police also flagged another novel tactic.

Victims are first tricked into disclosing their personal information on a fake bank website before they were enticed to download malware, which enables their phone's NFC card-reading function.

Fraudsters then lure the victim to tap their credit card against their phone with the NFC function on the pretext of giving them refunds -- and have their credit card information stolen.

In the first 8 months of this year, police logged nearly 30,000 scam cases.

Fake customer service-related fraud racked up 5,000 cases involving almost 700 million dollars.

Police say from January to August, the police's Scameter platform received over 500,000 reports of suspicious text messages, urging the public to continue reporting suspicious text messages to the platform.