Woman Almost Lost S$200K After Clicking on S$2 Dim Sum Instagram Ad Offer

By
Lin Jiawen
-
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In this day and age, there’s one thing that everyone should remember by heart:

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

And that’s especially the case when it comes to cheap things online.

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Earlier this month, on 4 June, a lady in Singapore came across an advertisement claiming to sell frozen dim sum for an extremely low price.

The lady, Mrs He (Hanyu pinyin), told Shin Min Daily News that she saw the advertisement on Instagram and that it was posted by a company called “MCY Frozen Food”.

Mrs He, 57, added that the advertisement included various frozen dim sum products.

According to Mrs He, the products advertised included a pack of 12 siew mai, five portions of glutinous chicken rice and 300g of steamed pork ribs.

They were all ‘sold’ at a price of $2 each.

The advertisement, which was entirely in Chinese, also indicated that each customer was only entitled to purchase a maximum of five packs of a product.

Upon seeing the advertisement, Mrs He was attracted to the low price of the items.

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Hence, she decided to contact the ‘seller’ through Instagram to learn how to purchase the dim sum.

Was Instructed to Install an Application, Was Unable to Complete Payment

After contacting the seller, the seller told Mrs He to install an application called ‘1stMallv1.2’.

She obliged and followed the seller’s instructions.

When accessing the application, Mrs He keyed in her personal information in order to make payment.

However, errors in the application kept popping up when she tried to do so.

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Husband Noticed Something Was Amiss After Receiving an Email from Bank

After encountering the errors, Mrs He did not think much about the issue or the seller.

However, her husband received an email from the bank the next day.

The email informed Mr He that his wife had increased their bank account’s daily maximum transaction limit from $10,000 to $200,000.

Mr He, 63, immediately sensed that something was amiss and asked his wife if she had encountered any odd transactions with her bank account.

After finding out about Mrs He’s attempt at submitting payment for the dim sum, Mr He realised that his wife had probably downloaded malicious software on her phone, which allowed her bank account details to be stolen by scammers.

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Mr He Called Bank to Freeze Accounts and Lodged a Police Report

When Mr He learned about his wife’s experience, he immediately called the bank and requested that it freeze all their accounts.

Thankfully, the scammers had yet to make any transfers from Mrs He’s account, as banks have a 12-hour period before implementing changes in the daily maximum transfer limit.

Mr He added that the bank staff advised him and his wife to lodge a police report, which they did.

When contacted by Shin Min, the police confirmed that a police report regarding this incident had indeed been made.

Investigations are ongoing.

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Lin Jiawen
Email: [email protected]