This is a special Straits Times resource for pre-university students as part of The Straits Times-Ministry of Education News Outreach Programme.
The team behind the ST-MOE News Outreach Programme has compiled a series of news resources for you. This week, we look at the evolving nature of modern crime.
Thai soldier guarding the scam center compound which Thailand had attacked and now occupy since mid-December.
ST PHOTO: MAY WONG
A notebook lies open on a table littered with keyboards and industrial USB hub ports with charging cables left plugged in. One entry in English reads: “I’m single and I’ve been busy with work in recent years. So I rarely make new friends. I’m from Singapore. From which country are you from?”
Another handwritten entry below continues: “In Singapore, a job like yours generally earns 1,500 to 2,000 SGD per month. How much do you earn in a month in your country?”
These entries appear to be a chat guide that a cyberscammer could use with an unsuspecting victim. Hundreds of such notebooks are found inside rooms that look like open office workspaces in a compound located in O’Smach town in Cambodia, bordering Thailand.
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Do not initiate contact with the sender or transfer any money if you receive harassment e-mails containing digitally modified images, the police say.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
If you get e-mails with images that appear to show you engaging in sexual acts, remain calm and do not initiate contact with the sender or transfer any money, the police said on April 14.
They said there have been recent reports of harassment e-mails involving such digitally modified images of victims, with at least three cases since March.
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AI allows scam operators to scale up at low cost, making them more willing to run the risk of being caught.
PHOTO: AFP
Criminals in South-east Asia are harnessing inexpensive AI tools to target bigger pools of potential victims at high speed, keeping scam centres humming even as governments try and crack down, senior officials at Interpol say.
Previously, some scams were easy to spot – from poor quality online ads luring people to work in such centres to the scams themselves, typically designed to make people part with their money through the promise of romance or investment returns.
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In its report, Meta said it has been investing in advanced AI systems to analyse text, images and context to identify sophisticated scam patterns quickly.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
Like the generative artificial intelligence tools they use, scam syndicates are evolving quickly to tap technology to fool victims into making upfront payments in a new pet adoption ruse.
In its Adversarial Threat Report for the first half of 2026 that was released on March 11, Meta shared that the scam was started by a Cameroon-based network to lure victims under the guise of animal rehoming and adoption.
The network posted fake pet adoption content and requested payment for veterinary care, transportation, or rehoming fees.
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In a recent case in Singapore, the Internal Security Department learnt that a radicalised 16-year-old had joined multiple ISIS-themed servers on Roblox.
PHOTOS: INTERNAL SECURITY DEPARTMENT
Gaming platform Roblox is home to an expansive realm in which more than 200 million users play, chat and connect every month as avatars in virtual worlds.
But law enforcement agencies worldwide say such multiplayer gaming platforms are also where sexual predators and extremists lurk, ready to lead young users down rabbit holes where the lines between online and offline worlds are blurred.
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