SINGAPORE, 3 AUG 2026 — When we reported on Singapore's record year of scam losses, the enforcement response was spread across two departments. Since 3 July it has had its own command. On 30 July that command published the results of its first islandwide sweep: 255 people under investigation, more than 660 scam cases, about S$5.6 million taken from victims.
Read on its own it is a substantial operation. Read against the two sweeps before it, it is something more interesting and less comfortable — the third such operation in six weeks, and the smallest of the three.
The sweeps are a standing operation
The Singapore Police Force has published three islandwide scammer-and-mule operations covering consecutive fortnights since mid-June, each one a separate release with its own numbers.
| Operation period | Under investigation | Scam cases | Victim losses | Led by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jun – 1 Jul | 230 | 713+ | ~S$9m | Commercial Affairs Dept |
| 2 – 15 Jul | 579 | 1,469+ | ~S$18m | Commercial Affairs Dept |
| 16 – 29 Jul | 255 | 660+ | ~S$5.6m | Cyber Command |
| Six-week total | 1,064 | 2,842+ | ~S$32.6m | — |
Compiled by RECATOOLS from three separate Singapore Police Force news releases dated 2, 16 and 30 July 2026. Each row is the force's own published figure; the total is our addition. All seven Police Land Divisions took part in every operation.
Over six weeks that is 1,064 people assisting with investigations, more than 2,842 scam cases and roughly S$32.6 million already gone. The 30 July operation is the first run by the new Cyber Command; the two before it were led by the Commercial Affairs Department. The handover happened between 15 and 16 July, in the middle of the sequence, marking the new unit's takeover of the work.
Why the swing tells you very little
The obvious story is in the middle column: 230, then 579, then 255. Losses of S$9 million, then S$18 million, then S$5.6 million. It is tempting to read the last fortnight as the new command arriving and cutting the problem by more than half.
That reading does not survive contact with the numbers. A fortnight-on-fortnight fall of that size in the underlying volume of scam activity is not plausible, and nothing else in the picture moved that far. What swings instead is operational tempo — how many cases were ready to action in a given window, how many divisions ran simultaneously, how large a batch had accumulated. The 2–15 July operation covered more than twice as many cases as the fortnight before it, which is the same volatility pointing the other way.
Three data points do not make a trend in either direction. The real story is not that the numbers fell but that they keep coming: a fortnightly cadence, several hundred people each time, and no sign of the supply of money mules thinning out.
The annual numbers are falling, and the average victim is losing more
The sweeps sit inside a year that finally went the right way. The force's Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief for 2025 records 37,308 scam cases, down 27.6 per cent from 51,501, and losses of about S$913.1 million, down 17.9 per cent from about S$1,112.4 million. Scam and cybercrime cases together fell 24.8 per cent to 41,974. It is the first decline in the series.
Those two percentages are not the same size, and the gap between them is the part to hold on to. Cases fell 27.6 per cent while the money fell 17.9 per cent, which means the average loss per case went up. Fewer people are being scammed, and the ones who are lose more.
| 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Scam cases | 51,501 | 37,308 |
| Scam losses | ~S$1,112.4m | ~S$913.1m |
| Mean loss per case | ~S$21,600 | ~S$24,500 |
| Median loss per case | not stated | S$1,644 |
Case, loss and median figures are the Singapore Police Force's own, from its Annual Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2025. The mean loss per case is RECATOOLS arithmetic dividing the force's total losses by its total cases — the brief publishes a median, not a mean, and the two differ enormously because the distribution is heavily skewed.
Two further figures from the brief bound what enforcement can reach. Cryptocurrency accounted for S$182.2 million, about 20 per cent of all scam losses, which is why the Anti-Scam Command runs a dedicated crypto tracing team — those transfers do not reverse. And 81.8 per cent of reported scams involved self-effected transfers: the victim moved the money, manipulated into it rather than hacked. In four cases out of five there is no unauthorised transaction for a bank to block. That is the ceiling on what account controls by themselves can do, and it is why the sweeps target the people whose accounts receive the money rather than the transaction that sent it.
Against all that, the Anti-Scam Command recovered about S$140.5 million during 2025 and helped victims avert at least S$348 million more.
What the Cyber Command actually is
Announced in May and formed on 3 July, the Cyber Command consolidates capability that was previously split between the Criminal Investigation Department and the Commercial Affairs Department, including the Anti-Scam Centre. It runs seven divisions: a Cyber Operations Centre, investigations, intelligence, partnerships and engagement, technology and development, planning and corporate services, and a scams public education function. It is commanded by Senior Assistant Commissioner Justin Wong Xing Shun.
"The Cyber Command reflects SPF's resolve to stay ahead of criminals who exploit the online world to harm our communities," SAC Wong said on its formation.
Structurally, the main change is the Anti-Scam Centre's new home inside the Cyber Operations Centre, where it sits alongside real-time disruption rather than as a separate recovery function. The centre traces and recovers funds with financial institutions and does cryptocurrency tracing and interdiction. The logic of putting recovery next to detection is speed. Scam proceeds move through mule accounts in hours; a recovery team that learns about a case from a file is already late.
The half that does not produce arrest numbers
Two months before the sweep, the Anti-Scam Centre ran a joint operation with DBS, UOB, OCBC, Standard Chartered and GXS. Between 1 May and 30 June it foiled more than 600 scam attempts, sent over 3,800 SMS alerts to more than 3,300 customers, and averted what the police put at more than S$38 million in potential losses.
Set that beside the six weeks of sweeps and the shape of the problem is visible. Enforcement chased roughly S$32.6 million that had already left victims' accounts. Prevention, over a comparable stretch, stopped a larger figure before it moved.
The two numbers are not directly comparable and should not be added or ranked. One counts realised losses reported by victims; the other is an estimate of losses that did not happen, which is by nature a projection about a counterfactual. But the asymmetry in effort is real: the intervention that produces no arrests, no seizure figure and no press cycle is the one operating at the larger scale.
The mule end of it
The people in these sweeps are largely not the syndicates. They are the account holders and SIM-card registrants whose details move the money, and Singapore has been steadily raising what that costs them. Money mules face discretionary caning of up to 12 strokes for certain money-laundering and SIM-card misuse offences.
Alongside that runs the Facility Restriction Framework, which limits banking services and mobile line subscriptions for people involved in mule-related offences. The police statement is precise about its reach, which applies not just to those prosecuted or convicted but also to those under investigation, given a warning, or issued composition sums. Restrictions can therefore attach before any finding of guilt.
There is a defensible logic to that — a mule account left open is a live conduit, and waiting for conviction means waiting months while it operates. It is still a consequence imposed on the basis of suspicion, applied to bank access and a phone line, and it deserves to be described plainly rather than folded into a total.
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