SINGAPORE: In April 2022, then-Finance Minister Lawrence Wong dialled into a widely reported government press conference via video link from the United States, to announce details of the easing of Singapore’s COVID-19 pandemic safety measures.Four years later, scammers would use footage from that call to convince an unsuspecting individual that Mr Wong, now Singapore's Prime Minister, was among a group of Singaporean and global leaders seeking financial help to stabilise trade flows through the conflict-ridden Strait of Hormuz.The victim had found himself in a fake Zoom conference that was spliced together using footage not just of Mr Wong, but also President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, and several other prominent political and financial figures.The victim ended up transferring at least S$4.9 million to the scammers, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said in May.
A full recording of the Zoom call was shared exclusively with CNA by SPF. CNA’s analysis uncovered a number of previously unreported techniques used to pull off the scam, chief among them the extensive usage of real but obscure videos that remain accessible on YouTube.The scammers, in other words, did not create their cast of Zoom characters from scratch. Instead, they constructed a live, convincing hoax almost entirely using real videos that were mixed with doctored audio, stolen identities and graphic overlays.REAL PEOPLE, REAL VIDEOSNine real, high-profile individuals or institutions were presented as participants in the scam call.One was Ms Indranee, who appeared in the call claiming that the “urgency of coordinated action” was needed to ensure “free and secure navigation through the Strait of Hormuz”.CNA’s investigation found that the footage of Ms Indranee was in fact taken from a March 2023 interview with radio station Money FM 89.3, where the Second Minister for Finance and National Development discussed housing and urban planning initiatives.
