Singapore, 3 December 2019… The Monetary Authority of Singapore
It has come to the attention of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that a website has been soliciting investments in Bitcoins by using fabricated comments attributed to Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, and Chairman of MAS, Tharman Shanmugaratnam. The website also attempts to impersonate a news page from a local media organisation.
The information on the website is highly deceptive and misleading. The statements attributed to SM Tharman are completely false. The site asks for payments into a purported Bitcoin trading platform and tries to obtain credit card or bank account information from readers.
In the past year, there have been numerous websites fraudulently using the names and photographs of Ministers and other prominent public personalities to solicit Bitcoin investments. Please refer to earlier advisories issued by MAS on 16 August 2019, 31 July 2019, 29 January 2019, 19 September 2018 and 18 September 2018.
Members of the public are advised to exercise extreme caution and avoid providing any financial or personal information on the forms linked from the website. Anyone who suspects that an investment could be fraudulent or misused for other unlawful activities should report such cases to the Police.
For more information on cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency investments, please refer to MoneySense’s consumer alerts .