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 and had not 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 go to the ASC office, as he suspected she was a scam victim.Her bank had alerted ASC about the suspicious transactions, which prompted ASP Lee to contact her. 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. Read more