How did S’pore end up needing ‘nanny’ laws to save scam victims from themselves?

If you are too stubborn to believe you have fallen for a scam, then you will have to be treated like a child.

Newly proposed laws seek to give powers to the police to essentially play parent to the most stubborn of scam victims by putting them on the equivalent of an allowance scheme.

The Protection from Scams Bill was introduced in Parliament on Nov 11, and proposes allowing the police to issue restriction orders (ROs) to banks, which will then restrict the banking transactions of an individual’s accounts.

These include money transfers and the use of ATM facilities and all credit facilities, affecting even PayNow and in-person, over-the-counter transactions.

But these victims will still be allowed some money for legitimate reasons, such as paying bills and buying daily essentials.

Like schoolchildren on an allowance, if they want money for other things, they will have to make a case for it by showing proof and telling the police what they want the money for. Police will decide if it is a legitimate reason and whether they will be allowed to have the money.

But unlike children, the money for the “allowance” is the victim’s own.

Although there has been strong public support for the proposed laws, which are meant to be a last resort, their unprecedented intrusiveness has raised some eyebrows.

Singapore Management University’s law don Eugene Tan said it was a matter of one’s perspective on the role of the state.

Associate Professor Tan said: “It is not so much draconian as it is paternalistic or intrusive, in that the reach of the state is going to be extended to instances where people are ‘willing’ victims.

“At first blush, the proposed laws appear to be intrusive – that the legislation is not empowering or protective, but instead renders individuals powerless to fully operate their bank accounts.

“Where one’s premise is that primacy should be accorded to one’s individual autonomy and agency, then the state has no business in such matters.”

He noted that those who hold such a view would likely argue that if someone wants to be scammed despite warnings, then the state is absolved of any liability.

“However, where one’s view is that scams are also a social menace that imposes a burden on society, then the long arm of the state should be extended to protect not just individuals, but also society at large,” he said.

The scourge of scams cannot be understated.

In Singapore, more than $2.7 billion has been lost to scams since 2019, with a record of more than $385.6 million lost in the first half of 2024.

The numbers are only expected to grow despite the many measures taken, including public education campaigns, new laws and anti-scam initiatives.

Prof Tan said the impact of scams requires that the Singapore Government do more, and quickly.

“It is on the cusp of being a crisis, if we are not there already, going by the sums that are being scammed. The cumulative loss is horrendous,” he said.

“If not more is done urgently and robustly, then we are not far from an unmitigated disaster. The Government is alive to the social cost, and it will be remiss in its duties not to deal with the imminent crisis.”

While initiatives and awareness campaigns are typical for dealing with emerging crime trends, a law that dictates how one might spend their own hard-earned money is not.

Sociologist Tan Ern Ser, adjunct principal research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies Social Lab, said the proposed laws are a significant step up from the other anti-scam initiatives.

But he does not expect much pushback from the public, despite the intrusive form of intervention.

He said: “It can be likened to a rescue operation, preventing a person from living a life of dependency on family members, which would affect family relations and the state, and being deprived of access to a decent quality of life.”

He added that the legislation also involves the state taking responsibility. 

“If no close family or friends could intervene, because the victim is adamant that this is his or her own business, then, as a last resort, having the state intervening to protect its citizens is the right thing to do,” said Dr Tan.

“After all, more generally, the state does have a responsibility to intervene to protect its citizens from harming themselves or being harmed by others.

“Freedom is a critical aspect of democracy, and here we are speaking of freedom from harm.”

But there remains the question of why the state should try to help those who seemingly do not want to be helped.

Since the proposed laws were announced, many have commented online that such stubborn victims should be left to take personal responsibility for their own decisions.

But such a perspective fails to recognise that scammers are master manipulators, able to deeply distort their victims’ judgment and sense of reality.

Mr Lee Rong Cheng, lead psychologist at the Police Psychological Services Department, explained that scammers are able to condition victims into making irrational decisions.

He said: “The scammers typically use a slew of tactics grounded in psychological persuasive principles and targeting of visceral cues, such as basic human desires like love and fear that typically serve as strong motivational forces, in scamming the victims.”

In love scams, this means showering victims with attention until they “fall in love” and trust the scammer, becoming predisposed to responding emotionally instead of rationally.

In investment scams, scammers engineer a situation that reinforces the sunk-cost fallacy and near-win phenomenon, by enticing victims with some returns initially.

At some point, the scammers stop giving returns to the victims and tell them that if they do not invest more, they will not be able to get anything back.

Scammers can also predict the likely course of events, and expertly twist the truth to warp the victim’s perception of reality.

Mr Lee said: “For instance, the scammers will confidently predict that individuals posing as police officers and bank staff will contact the victim about the large money transfers that the victim is effecting, which then paradoxically increases the victim’s trust in the scammer when the situation unfolds as predicted, rather than alert the victims to them being possible scam victims.”

One such victim, an 80-year-old woman, was convinced by a scammer not to trust the police, so she refused to speak to officers when they showed up at her home address.

When they took her to the Police Cantonment Complex in New Bridge Road, she accused them of building the entire complex just to cheat her.

Such cases may sound extreme, but the Ministry of Home Affairs said that based on previous cases, it is expecting to issue 10 or more ROs monthly if the proposed laws are passed.

That is the equivalent of one such case every three days.

There is no magic formula for undoing the “spell” cast on victims.

The police work with psychologists like Mr Lee and often have to spend a significant amount of time trying different ways to bring the victim around to the truth.

Mr Lee said: “There is no single point of realisation, unfortunately. Some victims may recognise that they have been scammed only when they are unable to withdraw their money, for instance, or they were asked to make repeated money transfers.

“Others may become aware after being alerted by family, friends or officials from the bank or police officers.”

He added that the moment of realisation can be very overwhelming for victims because they experience not only the full weight of the material losses in that moment, but also the psychological impact of shame, helplessness and self-blame.

In cases of love scams, this comes with the equivalent of a break-up with a toxic partner, who would have convinced the victim to cut ties with their loved ones during the course of their “relationship”.

Mr Lee said: “These victims can have a particularly challenging time, where they find that they have exhausted most of their material resources and have no social support to lean on while nursing a broken heart.”

As for those who still insist they will never fall for a scam and that the victims are the ones at fault, Mr Lee said they should not be too sure.

“It can be easy to point fingers at others to assure ourselves that we will not be scammed through identifying the differences between ourselves and those who have unfortunately been scammed,” he said.

“This is due to our innate cognitive biases in play, namely optimism bias, such as a belief that one is at lower risk of experiencing a negative event as compared with others; and overconfidence bias, thinking ‘I won’t fall for scams because I know what scammers do’.

“But the truth is that all of us can be susceptible to being scammed.”

Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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