Singapore has given Meta until September 30 to tighten measures against a surge of scams involving fraudsters posing as government officials, warning the tech giant that failure to comply could result in steep financial penalties.
Authorities said Facebook, owned by Meta, has become the main platform exploited by scammers, with victims losing tens of millions of dollars.
In a statement on Thursday, the Ministry of Home Affairs revealed that police had issued a directive requiring Meta “to put in place measures to target scam advertisements, accounts, profiles, and/or business pages impersonating key Government Office Holders on Facebook” by the deadline.
It cautioned that failure to comply “without reasonable excuse would render Meta liable on conviction to a fine” of up to Sg$1.0 million (US$776,000).
The ministry added that continued non-compliance could bring Meta additional penalties, with fines of up to Sg$100,000 “for every day or part of a day during which the offence continues after conviction”.
Between June 2024 and June 2025, Facebook saw a spike in fake advertisements, business pages, and accounts impersonating government officials, the MHA reported.
While acknowledging that Meta has introduced global measures to tackle impersonation scams, Singaporean authorities said the persistence of such cases remained a concern.
The order marks the first time under the city-state’s Online Criminal Harms Act, passed in 2024, that police have directed an online platform to combat scams.
Minister of State for Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming recently disclosed that scams involving impersonation of officials surged by 200 percent year-on-year in the first six months of 2025, with over 1,760 cases reported.
One high-profile case this year saw fraudsters deploy deepfakes and manipulated images of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to lure victims into bogus cryptocurrency investments.
Losses from such scams nearly doubled, climbing 90 percent to Sg$126 million in the first half of 2025, according to Goh.
Meta has not yet commented on the directive, though earlier this month the company reiterated that it opposes ads that “deceptively use public figures to try to scam people.”
