The Singapore government has given Meta, the parent company of Facebook, until September 30 to clamp down on scammers pretending to be government officials on its platform.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said the police issued a directive to 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.

Failure to comply “without reasonable excuse would render Meta liable on conviction to a fine” of up to Sg$1.0 million.

The government noted a rise in scammers on Facebook pretending to be government officials in fake advertisements, accounts, profiles, and business pages between June 2024 and June 2025. Despite Meta’s efforts to address the risk of impersonation scams globally, authorities are concerned that the scams have continued.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming said that scams involving the impersonation of government officials rose by 200% from the previous year to over 1,760 cases in the first half of this year.

Losses to impersonation scammers also rose by about 90% to Sg$126 million in the first half of 2025. In one notable case, scammers used deepfakes or images of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to sell fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes. Meta has been against ads that deceptively use public figures to try to scam people, but the company has yet to respond to the government’s directive.

The government warned that non-compliance after the deadline will subject Meta to a further fine of up to Sg$100,000 “for every day or part of a day during which the offence continues after conviction”. This is the first time the police have ordered an online platform to tackle the rising scam problem in the city-state under the Online Criminal Harms Act passed last year.