Written Reply to Parliamentary Question on Scam Cases Reported in 2020 and the Usage of ScamShield, by Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law

Question:

Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) of the total number of scam cases reported in 2020, how many cases were reported by victims who have been scammed more than once; (b) how many iOS users have downloaded ScamShield since its launch in November 2020; and (c) when is the application expected to be rolled out to Android users.

Answer:

1.      In 2020, 15,756 cases of scams were reported to the Police. Of these, 501 involved victims who had been scam victims before.

2 . As of 26 Apr 2021, there have been more than 110,000 downloads of ScamShield by iOS users.

3.      The National Crime Prevention Council, GovTech and the Police are working on technical issues related to the Android version of the  application. We are unable to provide a timeline for the roll-out of the Android version at this point in time.