Singapore (AFP) – Singapore will order Meta to crack down on scammers pretending to be government officials, a type of fraud that has boomed in the city-state and cost victims tens of millions of dollars, authorities said Wednesday. Meta’s Facebook is the top platform fraudsters use to carry out the scams, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming, who warned of fines of up to Sg$1 million ($776,000) if the tech giant fails to act.
During the first half of this year, so-called government official impersonation scams rose by 200 percent from the year before to more than 1,760 cases, Goh said in a speech to an anti-scam conference. In a notorious example, scammers used deepfakes or images of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong this year to sell fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes. Losses to impersonation scammers rose by about 90 percent to Sg$126 million in the first half of 2025. Facebook is the “top platform used by scammers for such impersonation scams,” Goh said.
Police “will require Meta to put in place measures to address scam advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages impersonating key Government officials on Facebook,” he said. This will be the first time police will order an online platform to tackle the rising scam problem in the city-state, Goh said. Meta said it was against the tech giant’s policies to impersonate or run ads that deceptively use public figures to try to scam people, adding, “we remove these when detected.”
“Scammers use every platform available to them and constantly adapt to evade enforcement,” the firm told AFP. “That’s why Meta has specialized systems to detect impersonating accounts and celeb-bait ads, including facial recognition technology,” Meta added, saying legal action was taken against offenders.
Goh noted Singapore is a “very attractive scam target” because the median wealth of adults in the city-state is above the global benchmark and the country is well-connected to the internet. Scammers also like to impersonate government officials because of Singaporeans’ high trust in their government, he said.
Goh added TikTok has also been classified as a “designated online service” with effect from September 1 this year. This means that by February 28 next year, the social media platform must comply with a code that requires it to implement efforts to counter scams and cybercrime.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s neighbour Malaysia has summoned TikTok’s top management after delays by the company in cooperating with police to curb the spread of fake news on the platform, local media reported. The meeting is expected to take place at Malaysian police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.
© 2024 AFP
