Police Arrested Teen Who Managed to Get Over $14K of Fake Refunds From Foodpanda

Delivery services like Foodpanda have a good refund system in place, which is why you dare to pay via card instead of Cash on Delivery (COD).

Whenever a rider fails to deliver your goods, you can ask for a refund from the company if you’ve already prepaid for your orders.

More often than not, the company will simply refund you based on trust.

But what if that trust is abused?

Then this happens.

Police Arrested Teen Who Managed to Get Over $14K of Fake Refunds From Foodpanda

On 24 Aug 2020, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) announced in a press release that a 17-year-old teenager has been arrested.

The police revealed that on 21 Aug 2020, they received a police report from the food delivery company.

Foodpanda believed that it was “deceived” into believing that its riders had failed to make their deliveries to a customer and had approved the claims.

Showcasing the efficiency of our men-in-blue, officers from the Jurong Police Division managed to establish his identity and arrest him on 24 Aug 2020.

Yes, they managed to do it within 3 days.

Their preliminary investigations revealed that he had made over $14,000 worth of fraudulent claims on delivery orders including “cooked food, groceries and liquor”.

He is due to be charged today and if found guilty, he could face up to 10 years of jail time and a fine.

The SPF says they take a serious view of such fraud activities:

“The police take a serious view against any person who may be involved in fraud activities and the perpetrators will be dealt with in accordance with the law.”

Many Delivery-Related Fraud Cases Recently

Recently, there’s been many fraud activities in the food and parcel delivery industry.

There was the Ninja Van delivery driver who pocketed over $18,000 worth of cash and mobile phones from customers and was caught because of his GPS

And another one who made parcels, which have items he liked, “missing during transit”.

All of them managed to get away with it for a short while but are eventually caught either because of a routine check or because the transactions piled up and raised a red flag for the company.

Moral of the story? You can run but you can’t hide.

Chances are, the money you managed to cheat out of anything will have to be paid back in full plus interest when the law catches up with you.

It’s like using a credit card, except worse.