She used to lead a global fraud risk team at Standard Chartered Singapore. So, the last thing Frances Yong expected was for her own mother to be scammed.
It happened in 2020, during the pandemic. Yong was in Singapore while her then-80-year-old mother, Boey Yut Wah, was in Malaysia. Because of travel restrictions, Yong could not visit her mother for close to two years.
In 2022, after borders re-opened, Yong finally visited Boey. That was when Boey told her that the bank had called to say she lost some money.
Rushing to the bank, Yong found out that her mother had fallen for a lucky draw scam. Under the guise of presenting Boey with a prize, scammers had tricked her into sharing banking details and emptied her account.
“It was not one bank account but five accounts in the same bank. They took a six-figure sum that my mum had saved after working for over 50 years as a primary school teacher and later, a kindergarten principal. They left around RM10 (S$3) in each account – around RM50 in total,” Yong told CNA Women.
This discovery affected Yong so much that the same year, she left her prestigious banking career to start White Byte.
From a small desk in her bedroom, the 53-year-old began designing scam prevention workshops for seniors. Today, the business has evolved into a digital literacy consultancy offering customised workshops to protect the vulnerable segments of public, as well as businesses, from scams and online harms.
