Foreign Scam Syndicate Dismantled After Blasting 50,000 Automated Calls in Under One Hour from Rented Singapore Apartment

A technician was sentenced to 5 years for installing devices that blasted 50,000 scam calls in 50 minutes, resulting in massive financial losses for Singaporeans.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 3, 2026, 4:33 AM EDT

Source: Information for this report was sourced from CNA

The Recruitment of a Technical Facilitator

The investigation into a massive telecommunications fraud began with the recruitment of Chong Wei Hao, a 42-year-old freelance electrician who sought extra income through social media. Recruited via Telegram by an individual using the pseudonym "NASA," Chong was offered a monthly salary and advance payments in cryptocurrency to establish a physical base of operations within Singapore. His primary responsibility was to provide the technical infrastructure necessary for a foreign-based syndicate to bypass local security filters and establish a foothold in the domestic cellular network.

The Establishment of a High-Speed Scam Hub

To facilitate the operation, Chong rented a residential unit in the Chai Chee district, specifically requesting high-speed broadband and increased security measures to prevent detection. He misled the landlord by claiming the apartment was intended for employees of a local food business, using falsified identification to secure the tenancy. Once the unit was established, Chong made multiple trips from Malaysia to install a series of "Voice over Internet Protocol Global System for Mobile communications" (VoIP GSM) Gateway devices. These units were mounted on elevated racks to maximize signal strength and monitored by internal CCTV cameras to ensure the masterminds could oversee the hardware remotely.

Mechanism of the Masked Call Operation

The syndicate’s methodology allowed masterminds, believed to be operating from Taiwan and Malaysia, to initiate thousands of calls without being physically present in Singapore. The system utilized a "SIM pool"—a centralized bank of multiple SIM cards—to route international calls through Chong’s installed devices. Because the hardware was physically located in Chai Chee, the recipients’ phones identified the incoming calls as legitimate local numbers. This sophisticated masking technique was designed to increase the "pick-up" rate of the calls, which featured automated messages impersonating government officials or financial investigators from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.