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The Police have observed a rise in phishing scams impersonating the Singapore Police Force (SPF), Traffic Police (TP) and Singapore Courts, where scammers attempt to obtain victims' personal details and banking information via fake messages. While no financial losses have been reported to date, the scam pattern has been observed across several channels.

In this scam variant, majority of the victims would receive unsolicited Apple iMessage from foreign numbers or email addresses. The messages misled victims into believing that they were from SPF, TP or “District Court”, and claimed that the recipient had committed a traffic offence, incurred an unpaid parking fee or failed to settle a court summons. The messages threatened serious consequences such as the issuance of an arrest warrant or the impoundment of their vehicle, and directed the victims to click a link or reply with a code (e.g., "Q", "Y" or "1") to "acknowledge" the notice. Clicking the link would redirect the victims to a spoofed government portal where they would be prompted to enter their card details, i-banking credentials or One-Time Password (OTP) to "process" the payment. Victims would only discover they had been scammed when unauthorised transactions appear on their bank accounts.

Members of the public should note that SPF, TP and the Singapore Courts will never request payment via unsolicited links or text message replies. Any notice of a traffic offence or court summons should be verified through the official portals at www.police.gov.sg or www.courts.gov.sg, or by contacting the relevant authority directly using the official contact numbers listed on their websites.

The Police would like to advise the public to adopt the following precautionary measures:

1. ADD – Install the ScamShield App and enable security features such as Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for your bank accounts and e-wallets and set appropriate transaction limits for internet banking and PayNow.
2. CHECK – Verify the authenticity of the communication by visiting the official SPF, Traffic Police or Singapore Courts websites. Do not click on links or reply to unsolicited messages claiming that you owe a traffic fine, parking charge or court summons.
3. TELL – Report any suspicious messages through the in-app reporting functions and tell authorities, family, and friends about scams.

Members of the public are advised to update their iMessage settings by ensuring that Filter Unknown Senders and Filter Spam are turned on (refer to Annex B), and to report suspicious messages using the in-app reporting function (refer to Annex C) to protect themselves against such scams.

For more information on scams, members of the public can visit www.scamshield.gov.sg or call the 24-hour ScamShield Helpline at 1799. Fighting scams is a community effort. Together, we can ACT Against Scams to safeguard our community.

Annex A – 1

Examples of Phishing Text Messages

Annex A – 2

Examples of Phishing Website

Annex B

¹Steps extracted from https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iph203ab0be4/ios

Annex C

²Steps extracted from https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iph3f94d910d/ios