Singapore Customs alerted members of the public of scams where victims received correspondences from companies claiming that the authority has withheld their consignments and instructing them to make payment to them before the detained goods could be released.
The authority stressed that it does not release detained items for sale and demand payment for the release of goods. “Any form of letters to instruct entities to make any form of duties/GST payment to third-party logistics operators is fake,” the custom stated in a Facebook post on Thursday (26 March).
According to the authority, these scammers usually claim that Singapore Customs has detained an item, or that the recipient has committed an offence, and request the recipient to do one of the following:
- Open a file attachment.
- Transfer a sum of money to an account belonging to an individual to release an item.
- Provide personal bank account number(s).
- Provide confidential personal information such as identification numbers, passwords, and/or credit card numbers.
The authority alerted members of the public that it does not ask for confidential personal information or request any payment through emails or phone, as well as sending official correspondence from personal email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or other unofficial email domains.
If anyone is in doubt, they can contact Singapore Customs on (65) 6355 2000 or send an email to [email protected] to verify the authenticity of any correspondence they have received from Singapore Customs.
