Hong Huifang Was Almost Scammed By A Caller Impersonating Her Friend; Says They Sounded “Exactly The Same”

Scams have become increasingly rampant these days, and no matter how careful you are, it’s easy to get caught off guard. 

Mediacorp actor Chen Hanwei, 56, recently recounted the time he fell victim to a ‘hypnosis scam’, where he unknowingly handed S$100 to a couple at the carpark of Paragon shopping mall. 

Hanwei also mentioned that Hong Huifang, 64, had nearly fallen for a scam as well, albeit a different one. She had received a call from someone pretending to be her friend, and the person had asked her to transfer money to them. 

Speaking to 8days.sg about the time she nearly got scammed, Huifang said: “I was jogging one day when I received a call from an unknown number. The person on the line said, ‘Eh Huifang-ah’ in the same manner my friend would.”

Her ‘friend’ then told her their phone had been stolen, and asked that Huifang saved their new number. She didn't think much of the call after it ended, until said ‘friend’ called her again two days later on a Sunday. 

“They said they were trying to do a bank transfer, but their OTP got sent to their old number and they had yet to set up their new bank details. I told them they could do the transfer online, but they insisted they couldn’t and asked for my help with the transfer,” she recalled. 

Her friend, who hadn’t specified the amount they needed, promised to return the money the next day, during the bank’s operating hours.

Huifang, concerned that her friend might need the money urgently, offered to bring cash to their house, but the other party repeatedly claimed they did not want to trouble her. 

Thankfully, Huifang’s gut told her something was off. She told her friend she was busy and promised to call back shortly. She then dialled said friend’s previous number. 

Her actual friend answered the call in the exact same tone she expected, and that’s when she found out they did not lose their phone at all. She realised the person she was talking to before was a scammer. 

The friend that the scammer was impersonating is an artiste, but Huifang declined to reveal who it was.

“If I foolishly deleted my friend’s original number, I would have no way to contact them again. I told my friend that there was someone impersonating them, and to warn others around them of the scam as well,” she said, adding that the scammer’s voice and tone sounded “exactly like the real person”. 

“Perhaps they were using an AI voice, and the story they spun was very reasonable,” she added.

The incident happened in 2024, and Huifang tells us that it was not her only encounter with scammers that year. 

Another time, she received a notification for a transaction of £9,000 (S$15,400) on her credit card one night, and it was spent at a store in England. However, she was in Singapore at that time. She immediately called the bank to request they block her card. 

On National Day, when she was out for dinner, she also received notifications of multiple unauthorised transactions on her card. By the time she contacted the bank, there were already 30 transactions made.

“I hear of these cases often, but now most of the people I know have just stopped answering calls from unknown numbers. I’ve told my dad to ignore calls from strangers as well,” she says. 

Huifang is now extremely cautious when it comes to making transactions online as well.

“I have a separate debit card that I use for online shopping, and I only transfer a small sum of money to that account when I need to make a transaction,” she says. 

She suggests setting spending limits to one’s cards when shopping overseas or online, so scammers don’t have unlimited access to your money. 

Huifang’s advice? “I think it’s important to not get flustered when you receive calls from someone claiming to be your friend, asking you for money. Call the friend back to verify the matter before doing anything, and stay vigilant when it comes to using your card to purchase things overseas or online.”

Photos: honghuifang/ Instagram