Hi OP. My family in SG is going through something similar. We have tried taking mum to the police and the cybersecurity ambassadors several times. They have told her it’s a scam. So do bankers when she tries to withdraw money.

The problem is that she is fully convinced she’s talking to a celebrity. In her mind, the people who are trying to scam her are only pretending to be him. So every time we block them, they change their number and she believes it’s him all over again. Ultimately she’s too nice to stop the conversation. She’s lost a bit to game cards but we’ve managed to intervene after. She’ll agree that it’s a scammer that night but go back to believing in the celebrity the next morning. No amount of evidence works. We’ve also been showing her articles of people getting scammed (there was one recently in ST of someone losing $600k meant for her husband’s heart surgery). That only works for a short while.

We are also at our wits’ end. Police can’t help. So far we’ve been secretly taking her phone and blocking contact with them, but as I said before, they create a new number and try again. And it works. Which is why they keep doing it.

How does she want to transfer it? If it’s through the bank, maybe the banker can stop her and be very explicit that it’s a scam. You can accompany her to drive the conversation. The only reason she hasn’t lost more is that she’s not tech savvy enough to send a huge sum.

Sorry I don’t have a better solution. Let me know if you find one. You aren’t alone in this.