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SINGAPORE – The Carousell salesman called the couple at any time of the day, claiming that he would soon return their money.
The 27-year-old, who was offering hotel stays in Marina Bay Sands, even gave them an address to collect the $ 277,000 he took from them in a bag full of cash, but always canceled meetings at the last minute.
This was one of 3,354 e-commerce scams reported by the police last year, police announced on Tuesday (February 9) when publishing their annual statistics.
Ivan and his girlfriend Jessica (not their real names) finally decided to report him to the police and the scammer was indicted in court last month.
“Usually we go to Carousell for our stays and we do it quite frequently. So when we came across this vendor we went to check his reviews as usual and saw that he was quite trustworthy,” Ivan said at a press conference held by the police on Monday.
Ivan and Jessica, both in their 20s, initially paid $ 29,000 for nine hotel suites with three-night stays.
However, the Carousell salesperson made excuses to divert more money to them, such as claiming they had to pay cancellation fees even though he did not secure the reservation.
He convinced them to wire more money to him so that he could supposedly pay other buyers and have the authorities unfreeze his bank account.
To prevent them from going directly to the hotel, he told them that he had reserved the rooms with a Paiza membership that does not allow members to sell rooms.
He also claimed that he could pay them back by showing them that he had about $ 230,000 in his bank account.
Ultimately, the couple gave him more than $ 277,000 over a four-month period.
“The reason this amount went up so much is because we were so wrapped up in this situation and we didn’t know what else to do, how to get this money back … (and) because it gave us hope that he will get this money back,” said Iván.
The scammer was arrested on January 21 and has been charged in court.
A total of 15,756 scams were reported in 2020, an increase of 65.1 percent in cases from the 9,545 reported in 2019.
Ecommerce scams, which rose 19.1 percent last year, were the most commonly reported type of scam last year.
The total amount scammed in ecommerce scams increased to $ 6.9 million in 2020, from $ 2.3 million the year before. The largest sum cheated in a single case in 2020 was $ 1.9 million.
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