SPF Sends Out Advisory About Gadgets & Mobile Phone Scams Again As More People Kena Scammed

These are actual reported stories of scams:

Someone bought not one but two iPhone X’s from a seemingly legit mobile website and transferred S$2,000 to a bank account.

The seller even talked over WhatsApp, and the Carousell account had good reviews.

It seems good, except the item never arrived.

And just in case you think that only sellers can scam you, you can get scammed by buyers too.

Another scam report was by a seller on Gumtree for a Samsung Galaxy S10+ for S$1,000. A buyer approached him/her and wanted same day delivery for his daughter’s birthday, and even sent a screenshot showing a transfer of S$1,040 (S$40 of which are delivery fees) from Bank of America.

Inter-bank transfers usually take two to three days, so the payment isn’t in seller’s account yet.

All seemed well right? Nope.

The seller got blocked on WhatsApp and lost his phone plus the delivery fees to the unknown buyer.

There are 2125 such scams worth S$1.9 million so far

And just this year from January to May, there are at least 445 cases involving mobile phones and gadgets, which is a 56% increase from 285 in the same period last year.

You can read more of these scams on ScamAlert.

Apple Airpods, Nintendo Switch and Samsung phones are commonly involved in these scams. And as you can probably tell from the above stories, they can look pretty legit on the surface.

Advice from our people in blue

With this, our people in blue sent out another advisory.

Here are the three main points:

• Buy only from authorised sellers. Read reviews of the sellers. Be very cautious of deals that sounds too good. You think people like to lose money meh?
• Many scams look legit, and use local banks or have NRIC/driver’s license to show you. That’s how they scam people.
• No advance payments and deposits. If you have to, use arrangements that pay only when you receive the item. Meet the seller if you can.

If you know any juicy information on scams, call 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness.

Need more specific advice? Call the National Crime Prevention Council’s anti-scam helpline at 1800-722-6688 or go to www.scamalert.sg.

70% of such scams in 2018 took place on Carousell

Not a surprising number with so many Carousell users around, but the point is not to trust anyone even on the larger platforms.

Carousell themselves are also fighting off such scammers by utilising artificial intelligence to detect fake listings and using digital fingerprints to prevent the returning of offenders.

Of course, SPF themselves aren’t just sitting around rescuing cats from trees and posting them on Instagram. They set up an E-Commerce Fraud Enforcement and Coordination Team (E-FECT) in November 2018. According to them, the team arrested 26 such scammers and solved more than 230 e-commerce scams.

If you want to watch some entertaining and informative videos about scams, do subscribe to our YouTube channel, whereby we’ve worked with the SPF to come out with a few anti-scam videos:

In the meantime, just remember:

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is a scam.