The Singapore police force (SPF) said the ring was busted thanks to their collaboration with the Johor police’s commercial crime investigation department, Bernama reported.

“Close information-sharing between MariBank (a licensed digital bank in Singapore) and Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) identified the Malaysian-based syndicate as the source of a series of scam-linked bank accounts.

“Acting on the intelligence supplied by the ASC, the Johor police raided the syndicate’s premises on March 17, seizing 83 mobile phones, 45 bank tokens, and a computer containing the syndicate’s operating software,” the SPF said.

It said this was part of a transnational anti-scam operation in 10 jurisdictions, with 7,553 people under investigation over more than 138,000 scam cases that caused US$752 million in losses.

The operation held from March 10 to May 7 involved the authorities in Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia, Macau, Brunei and Canada.

This collaboration led to the arrest of 3,018 people aged 13 to 85 and the freezing of about 102,000 bank accounts, with US$161 million in illicit funds seized.