SINGAPORE – Thinking she had found her ‘lifelong partner’, a single mother sold her flat and transferred the earnings together with her life savings worth over $120,000 into a scammer’s cryptocurrency wallet.
Even though they had never met, or had any video calls together, she still packed up her belongings, withdrew her two children from school and was about to begin a new life abroad with her ‘lover’.
A day before her flight, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Lee Hua Sheng from the Anti-Scam Command’s (ASC) Crypto Tracing Team (CTT), asked her to come down to the ASC office, as he suspected she was a scam victim.
Her bank had alerted the ASC about the suspicious transactions, which prompted ASP Lee to contact the woman. She told him that her ‘lover’ had been ignoring her messages.
The CTT is only eight months old, having been operationalised in March to address the threat of scam proceeds dissipating through virtual assets like cryptocurrency.
Almost a quarter of the
$1.1 billion lost to scams in 2024
involved cryptocurrency, with one victim losing $125 million in cryptocurrency funds in a malware-enabled scam.
Providing support to scam victims is one part of ASP Lee’s job as a senior investigation officer there. He described his role as a “human firewall”, to detect scams and protect victims.
ASP Desmond Chia, who is the Officer-in-Charge of the CTT, said the team was formed because of an increase in cryptocurrency adoption.
Said ASP Chia: “Globally, people are more attuned to cryptocurrency, and it’s a trend which scammers have also noticed.”
He added that cryptocurrency is an efficient way for scammers to launder funds without having to go through banks.
Both officers were speaking to reporters at the Police Cantonment Complex on Nov 6.
In the first half of 2025,
over
$81.6 million in cryptocurrency was lost to scams
.
Tether, Bitcoin, and Ethereum were the top cryptocurrencies scam victims reported to have lost.
Recounting the incident with the woman, ASP Lee said she had met her ‘lover’ online, and they had been communicating over WhatsApp messages and voice calls for a year.
But she had never seen his face.
ASP Lee said: “I conducted a blockchain analysis and traced the funds. We saw the funds move out of her wallet, and laundered through multiple scam-linked addresses.”
A blockchain is a system used to keep record of transactions, especially those involving cryptocurrency.
ASP Lee added: “Presenting the findings to her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The moment the harsh truth hit her, the scammer’s silence and avoidance suddenly made sense (to her) and she burst into tears.”
ASP Lee spent about three hours talking to the woman, who did not realise then that she had avoided a worse fate.
Said ASP Lee: “If she had gone ahead and flown to a foreign country, she would have been stranded with her two young children with no money.”
ASP Lee later contacted the woman’s family and advised them on how to support her.
He said: “She’s in a better state now, trying to recover from this episode and move on with her life.”
ASP Lee said fraudsters can exploit victims’ lack of knowledge about cryptocurrency.
For instance, scammers can sometimes pose as teachers or mentors offering to help victims invest in cryptocurrency, but instead
guiding
them to put their funds in fake platforms
.
Officers in the CTT are trained to focus on real-time operations to stop scams in progress.
Their daily work includes conducting live blockchain analysis to trace wallet movements, coordinating fund freezing and recovery, and engaging scam victims to prevent them from transferring their funds to fraudsters.
In selecting officers to join the CTT, ASP Chia said candidates must be interested in cryptocurrency, due to the technicalities involved in crypto-tracing.
One of the primary differences between tracing cryptocurrency and tracing physical funds is how transparent cryptocurrency transactions are. These transactions are recorded in a blockchain, which is more easily accessible compared to bank transactions, where information has to be obtained from the bank.
ASP Chia said: “If we have a fund transfer from DBS to UOB and then to OCBC, we have to go to all three banks to get information about the movement of funds.
“Once cryptocurrency is transferred into the blockchain, we can trace its movement from one wallet to another, as long as it stays within the blockchain.”
However, it is difficult to find the owners of the crypto wallets, as these wallets can be created by anyone.
Blockchain transactions are also irreversible, which puts pressure on CTT officers to get to the funds before the transactions are finalised.
In the first half of 2025, the ASC recovered more than $56.7 million of scam losses, which included $39.7 million in non-cryptocurrency and $17 million in cryptocurrency.
ASP Chia said the CTT is working on developing protocols with their partners and international law enforcement agencies to speed up the cross-border recovery of funds.
They are also looking into automation to streamline their work processes, and making use of enhanced analytics for quicker wallet identification.
With cryptocurrency usage expanding, ASP Lee urged members of the public to know what they are investing in.
He said: “Don’t invest blindly, and only invest what you can afford to lose. So many times we’ve seen victims pour their life savings (into investments), and that’s very dangerous.”
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