SCAMMERS move fast.

So banks have to move even faster.

That's exactly what OCBC Bank did when a number of their customers fell prey to a lucky draw scam.

Of the $10,000 that was supposed to be transferred to the perpetrator, only $30 slipped through, said Mr Winson Toh, assistant vice president of Fraud Risk Management at OCBC.

They have made a police report.

Fewer than 100 customers were hit.

The SMS scam, in which a man pretended to be a representative from Malaysian oil company Petronas, was first reported in The New Paper on Thursday.

He told his near-victims that they had won money in a lucky draw and asked for their banking details.

Mr Toh told reporters yesterday that they were alerted by several customers, the first on 25 Jun.

The victims reported unauthorised transfers from their accounts after they provided savings account numbers and Internet Banking access details.

First, the bank stopped the money transfers and traced the destination - a single, non-OCBC account.

'We monitored the transfers to this... account. So if there were any transfers, we took the initiative to stop payment and contacted the customer,' said Mr Toh.

They contacted the customers to verify if the transfers were authorised.

If the customer was uncontactable, they temporarily deactivated the account and wrote to them for a reply.

All the bank accounts involved were Singapore-based. The victims were from various age groups, races and nationalities. A few of them were senior citizens.

QUICK RESPONSE

OCBC's swift response could also be thanks to its creation of a Fraud Incident Response Team last year. Headed by MrToh, it was set up so that when needed, the bank can get different teams to quickly coordinate across the group.

But the bank said customers must do their part too.

Said Mr Patrick Chew, OCBC's head of delivery, group consumer financial services: 'The key is to get the message out to the general public as well.'

According to the website of the Commercial Affairs Department, more than 210 victims were cheated of more than $2 million in lottery scams last year.

OCBC advises that customers should not reveal confidential banking information or hand over bank documents to third parties without verification.

This means calling the organisation supposedly offering the prizes through an official number or verifying if loved ones who seem to be seeking help are really in trouble.

And there's that old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.