Calling for Internet Love Scam Victims

Dear all,

We have being contacted by a reporter from the Straits Times to look for victims of Internet love scams.

If you or any of your friends have experienced such scam, do step out and share your story because it can help many people to avoid being scammed.

To share the story, please contact us or Carolyn at kcarolyn at sph dot com dot sg.

Please note that the article is due for this coming Sunday (12 February 2012).

I'm Carolyn from the Straits Times.

There has been a rise in internet love scams, up from last year and we're looking at doing a story on victims of Internet love scams and to find out the reasons why they fell prey to such crime.

We're hoping that Scams Singapore would be able to refer us to victims who were scammed before or were close to being scammed. Rest assured we won't mention any names in our story.

By helping us, Scams Singapore would be doing a public service as the stories and experiences would help to serve as cautionary tales for many other Singaporeans.

Hope to hear from you as soon as possible, thanks.

Regards,
Carolyn
6319****

NTUC Voucher - Bounced Cheque Scam

On Thursday, 17 November 2011, two men aged 19 and 22 had used a bounced cheque to buy $500,000 worth of NTUC FairPrice vouchers at FairPrice's head office in Upper Thomson Road.

Somehow, the standard procedure for issuing vouchers that required cheque payment to be cleared first was not followed. The two men were apprehended near Hougang Street 91 and Bukit Batok East Avenue 4 on Saturday, 19 November 2011. $15,000 worth of vouchers had already been used.

The NTUC vouchers serial numbers ranges from 607379330 to 607404329.

This is, in fact, a very weird scam incident that has taken place in Singapore where crime rate is rather low. The ages of the criminals are young and what makes a person not has a slight suspicion about their financial status? What makes this scam more interesting is that it involves such a huge sum of money and yet the FairPrice's staff has made such a huge mistake.

$500,000 is around the cost of a HDB 5-room flat, which Singapore couples have to work over 30 years in order to repay the loan. If such big amount of sales cannot be handled properly, how about smaller sales?

We hope all companies, including those from other countries, would take precaution of such cheque scam. Never release your product or voucher until the bank has confirmed that the cheque has been cleared.