Fund-Raising Ice-cream Scam

Recently, there are door-to-door ice-cream sellers claiming to be selling their ice-cream to raise funds for the CDAC (Chinese Development Assistance Council).

CDAC has confirmed that the ice-cream sellers are not related to them. They have made a media release on Wednesday stating that it had been notified of people who are using its name to solicit public donations.

The scammers have been active in four areas - Jurong, West Coast, Hill View, and Bukit Panjang.

If you happen to meet such salesperson, do ask for his/her identity pass. Inform the police immediately if you suspect it is a scam.

Nude Video Scam - Alexander Soh Zhi Ren

The 22-year-old man, Alexander Soh Zhi Ren, who has worked with his then 16-year-old girlfriend, Yap Siew Ting, for the nude webcam scam, is sentenced to jail for five years and ordered to be given five strokes of the cane for various offences.

He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 23 charges, including theft, forgery and handling of stolen goods.

Yap Siew Ting is given probation for the webcam nude video scam.

Customer Scam on E-Commerce Website

We have received this scam story from a visitor "Bouncer". He is probably a foreigner who owns an e-commerce website. The "customer" would purchase items from him, paying him via PayPal. After receiving the goods, the "customer" would file report that the purchase is unauthorized and thus getting back the money while able to keep the purchased items.

Blog shop owners should take note of this online shopping scam.

Below is the victim:

I have an e-commerece website, when they first contacted me and ask if I take credit cards which is strange because I have all (4) credit cards in a Logo on my front page of my website. When you say yes, they will order from 1500.00 to 4500.00 worth of product all in multiples of what ever product they choose. They are usually pick the very expensive items. They immediately start asking you to ship asap, i wait for tracking number they say. They ask everyday or every other day if you shipped yet. They wait until they know the package is shipped and in customs and then they report to the credit card company it was an unauthorized purchase. What stinks is , the scammer gets the product and if you have a pay-pal shopping cart like I do, pay-pal on this end takes the full amount of the order out of your account until it is settled. You have to go to the details link on pay pal in your account to see if you are eligible for seller protection when someone places an order. If not they take the entire amount out of your pay-pal account which puts you in the negative if you don't keep a lot of money in there. If you have seller protection, they leave the money in I guess and work out the dispute with the credit card company. These orders all have addresses that are shipped to a building on Airport Rd in Singapore, building No. whatever. This is most likely where the freight forwarders are to ship somewhere else. I shipped one order and the dispute ended in my favor but shortly after I received 3 other big orders all going to some building on airport rd in Singapore. They are telling there buddies they found some sucker in the states that will send out the product. I have since stopped all sales to Singapore and if I do get an order, I immediately refund the money right back. I hope this helps save someone from this scam of people ordering product off your website and then claiming unauthorized purchase after you have sent the product. You lose the product and your account gets all screwed up for up to 30 days until they get it worked out.

We would like to highlight that such scammer exists in every country. Even though large number of residents in Singapore are foreigners, the government is still able to reduce crime rate, such that Singapore is safer and more crime-free than most other countries.

Any victim from other country should try to contact the Singapore police force for assistance in any online scam. It would do you good while helping Singaporeans to remove black sheep.