A KIDNAP scam was thwarted by alert staff from a bank and a remittance company who promptly called the police on Monday afternoon.

 

Police said that the victim, a 55-year-old housewife, received a call at about 2.30pm while she was at home, from a male caller who spoke to her in Mandarin.

 

In the background, the victim said she heard what sounded like her 27-year-old son screaming for help before the caller told her that he had been kidnapped.

 

Her son was holidaying in Australia at the time.

 

The caller demanded a ransom of $30,000 and that she remain on her mobile phone so he could stay on the line with her while she made the transaction.

 

Fearing for her son's safety, she took a taxi to an OCBC Bank branch at People's Park Centre.

The teller noticed that the victim appeared nervous and scribbled a note to her as she was still on the phone. The victim wrote back, saying that her son had been kidnapped and that she did not want any help from the police.

 

When she received the money, the victim left the bank in a hurry and was seen heading towards the nearby Pearl's Centre. The bank teller then called the police.

 

The victim then went to a remittance centre, Wealthgate International Trading, in Pearl's Centre, and asked to urgently remit a sum of $29,500 to an account in China. Sensing something amiss, the staff at the centre delayed the proceedings, telling the victim that it would take time to process her request.

Remittance counter staff member Lin Bin, 41, said: 'She looked quite nervous and her hands were shaking.'

 

Meanwhile, they showed the victim advisories on phone scams but again, she refused help and remained on the line with the caller. The staff member then called the Commercial Affairs Department.

 

Staff Sergeant Nio Beng Khoon, 32, from the Central Police Division was first on the scene within minutes. He told The Straits Times he communicated with the woman by scribbling on pieces of paper.

 

'She was not convinced that it was a scam and insisted that she wanted to carry on with the remittance,' he said.

 

The victim refused to divulge the contact details of her son but did give her husband's telephone number. It was through her husband that her son was contacted at about 6.15pm. He was unharmed.

This is not the first time that staff of financial institutions helped to foil a scam. In the space of six months last year, employees at POSB branches foiled 14 attempts at kidnap scams.

 

Last year, 434 people in Singapore lost about $7.6 million to telephone scams, up from the 378 who lost $4.6 million in 2007. From August 2007 until the start of this year, the police have arrested 33 people for phone scams.