SINGAPORE: A man with dementia was targeted by scammers twice within a year, as reported by his wife, who was smart enough to catch the crime.
Case details revealed that the man received two suspicious calls involving life insurance policies within a year. As shared by his 70-year-old wife, she claimed that at the beginning of the year, her husband received a call asking him to pay insurance premiums.
“My husband didn’t understand, and he even made an appointment to meet the caller,” the wife declared.
The scammer then claimed that she was at their HDB block and would be taking the man to the bank to help him withdraw. However, the wife was quick-witted and took the phone call, and remarked that she had called the police. Afterwards, the scammer did not call back for a while.
However, the man received another call recently stating that he had not paid for the life insurance policy, and that the policy would be cancelled if the payment was not made. The wife, being aware of the scamming situation, took the phone call again and confronted the scammer.
The wife observed that the scammer did not sound local and urged her husband to pay the insurance amount of $750 a month, $8,000 a year, as soon as possible. What is more alarming is that the scammer knew her husband’s policy number and kept asking about his financial account details.
With this, the wife confronted: “I immediately asked him what kind of insurance policy cost S$8,000, and I also asked him for the phone number of the person in charge. He gave me two numbers, but they were both disconnected.”
Unfortunately, this was a first for the couple, especially for the man who has been paying his insurance policy for 50 years now, and the payments had always been deducted from the bank.
Many people, especially the elderly, may become worried when they hear about potential issues with their insurance policies. However, the wife advised everyone to stay vigilant and verify the information through multiple sources before handing over any money based solely on a phone call.
In similar news, there was a report where a 70-year-old man reported that his wife has been receiving tickets from the Housing Development Board since September last year, primarily due to illegal parking.
However, the man claimed that none of them owns a car, and neither do their two sons and daughters, which makes the case mysterious.
Read more about the news story here.