Singapore scam and cybercrime cases fell by 17.9 percent to 18,391 cases, compared with 22,397 cases in the same period in 2025, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said on Wednesday.
SPF said in its Mid-Year Scam and Cybercrime Brief 2026 that the overall scam and cybercrime situation improved further in the first half of 2026, continuing the downward trend since 2025.
Scams which accounted for 91.5 percent of the total cases, fell by 14.4 percent to 16,821 cases in the first half of 2026, from 19,644 cases in the same period last year.
The amount lost to scams also fell by 17.9 percent to about S$410.6 million ($323.36 million) in the first half of 2026, from about S$500.2 million in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency losses continued to form a sizeable percentage of scam losses, accounting for about S$65.5 million, or about 16 percent of total scam losses in the first half of 2026.
Nevertheless, this is a decrease of 43 percent from S$114.9 million during the same period in 2025.
“This suggests that the cryptocurrency-related measures put in place, such as the formation of the Cryptocurrency Tracing Team in the Cyber Command and the public education efforts highlighting this scam trend may have made an impact,” said SPF.
It is noted that scammers leverage cryptocurrency as transactions are irreversible and difficult to trace, making asset recovery extremely challenging.
Tether, Ethereum, and USD Coin were the top cryptocurrencies in terms of amount lost and accounted for about 95.3 percent of total cryptocurrency scam losses.
Meanwhile, E-Commerce scams recorded the highest number of reported cases among all scam types, with an increase of 19.3 percent to 3,865 cases in the first half of 2026, from 3,240 during the same period in 2025.
The amount lost to e-commerce scam cases increased by 18.9 percent to about S$8.3 million in the first half of 2026, from about S$7.0 million during the same period in 2025.
SPF also highlighted that social media impersonation scams recorded a significant increase of 71.3 percent in amount loss to S$3.9 million in the first half of 2026, from S$2.2 million during the same period in 2025.
This increase was driven by a single case that amounted to about S$2.1 million losses in cryptocurrency.
The number of cases reported also increased by 47.9 percent to 587 cases, from 397 cases during the same period in 2025.
A notable social media impersonation scam variant involves scammers approaching victims who are contacts of compromised WhatsApp accounts.
In the first half of 2026, there were 391 reported cases, accounting for 66.6 percent of social media impersonation scam cases.
Scammers would cite various reasons such as the need for an emergency loan or issues with a bank transfer, to deceive victims into transferring monies to bank accounts or Payment Service Provider accounts (e.g. Liquid Pay, YouTrip) controlled by scammers.
Victims may be asked to perform additional transfers after completing initial transfers. Victims typically realized that they had been scammed only after verifying with the actual owners of the impersonated WhatsApp accounts.
Meanwhile, messaging platforms (27.6 percent), social media (26.7 percent), online shopping platforms (11.2 percent) and phone calls (9.7 percent) were the top contact methods used by scammers to reach out to victims.
While messaging platforms, social media and phone calls remain the top contact methods for scammers, there has been a decrease in reported scam cases involving these contact methods.
Overall, online platforms continue to be used as a first approach for majority (89 percent) of scam cases.
Scam cases involving designated online service providers (DOSPs) under OCHA have decreased by 14.1 percent, continuing the downward trend from the same period in 2025.
For example, cases on TikTok have decreased by 16.2 percent to 1,244 in the first half of 2026, from 1,485 during the same period in 2025.
Three products from Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) remain of particular concern, as they made up a significant proportion (34.1 percent) of total cases reported across all platforms exploited by scammers to contact victims.
Cases on Carousell rose by 17.1 percent to 1,555 in the first half of 2026, from 1,328 during the same period in 2025.
SPF said it continued to work closely with service providers to disrupt scams.
In the first half of 2026, the authority disrupted 47,500 scam-related mobile lines, 37,500 WhatsApp lines, 31,600 online monikers and 52,200 malicious websites.
Its measures also included Implementation Directives issued to Apple, Google and Meta to combat impersonation scams; implementation of the facility restriction framework, and enhancements to the Scam Analytics and Tactical Intervention System (SATIS) to scale the proactive disruption of scam websites.
“While the scam situation has improved, the high number of cases and losses remains a concern, and tackling scams continues to be a national priority,” said SPF.