SINGAPORE, Nov 28 — Staff from Singapore’s public healthcare institutions have become targets of an extortion scheme, with victims receiving emails containing fake obscene images of themselves.

The country’s Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed the incidents to media outlet CNA today, revealing that the doctored images featured publicly sourced pictures of the victims’ faces superimposed on explicit images of a man and a woman in a "compromising situation.”

The ministry said it was alerted to the emails on Tuesday, which were sent from multiple addresses, threatening to release the images unless a ransom was paid.

"The emails were sent from multiple email addresses and threatened to expose the images unless a ransom was paid,” the ministry was quoted as saying.

The ministry said that all affected individuals have been advised to report the incidents to the police.

"All affected individuals have been advised to file reports with the police. No monetary loss has been reported from the affected individuals,” MOH added.

In response to the situation, the ministry said it has alerted all public healthcare institutions, statutory boards, and staff members to report any similar extortion attempts to the authorities.

"MOH and our healthcare clusters adopt a zero-tolerance stance against any form of staff harassment and abuse, and strongly condemn this malicious act against our healthcare workers and their families,” the ministry said.

Meanwhile, Singapore police issued a separate release yesterday, revealing they had received more than 20 reports of similar extortion attempts this month. These reports included complaints from public healthcare workers who had been targeted in the same manner.

The emails, which were sent to victims’ work email addresses, warned of "threatening consequences” unless the recipients transferred USDT50,000 (about RM222,275) to a cryptocurrency wallet specified in the message.

The police also noted that preliminary investigations suggest the victims’ personal information, such as photographs and email addresses, were likely gathered from publicly available online sources.

Investigations into the case are ongoing.