A recent spate of telephone scams in Singapore where callers masquerade as staff of courier company DHL has seen more Singaporeans coming forward online to warn the public about providing personal information to the scammers.
On Tuesday (June 7), one netizen took to his blog, crazyrandomchatter, to explain why his friend claims that Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) alumni would not never fall for these scams which seem to originate from China.
In a nutshell, his rant was hinged on the fact that callers of these scams typically speak Mandarin.
The blogger, who goes by the moniker RENCHoo, said: “ACS boys. Mandarin. The two don’t go well together. My friend didn’t understand a single word that the scammer was saying.”
He continued: “I’ve been told that the ‘-‘ in ‘Anglo-Chinese School’ is not a dash symbol. It’s actually the symbol for subtraction. So ‘Anglo-Chinese School’ means ‘Anglo Chinese School’.”
The post also highlighted two other scam cases.
In one of the cases which was first highlighted on Facebook, a netizen said that the scammers targeted his “lowly-educated, retired” mother, whose savings were “painstakingly accumulated over a lifetime of work as a nightshift operator and convenience store cashier to support our family”.
The netizen said the scammer who identified himself as Wang Xiaoqi told his mother that she was being investigated by the Chinese police for trafficking fake credit cards and money laundering.
The post also released details of the bank account number and mobile number of the scammer.
In the second case, Ms Cynthia Tay-Lek did not fall prey to the similar scam but also posted on Facebook an account of her phone conversation with the scammer.
Ms Tay-Lek decided to play along with the scammer and provided him with a fictitious NRIC number, which translated in Mandarin is “Daddy is going to the bar”.
The scammer then told her that their system showed that she had a package from the United States to Singapore and that it contained $200,000 and two fake passports.
After telling the scammer that he could keep the passports but to return her the cash, the scammer told Ms Tay-Lek that he could not release the parcel until she paid a fine.
At this point, she said: “I’m sorry I can’t do it now cos I’m halfway killing someone.”
The Straits Times
The conversation ended when the scammer could not get Ms Tay-Lek to remit money to him online.
On the National Crime Prevention Council’s Scam Alert website, the stories of 40 people who encountered such scams were posted for the month of June this year. Of these cases, 37 involved parcels and Chinese scammers.
stephluo@sph.com.sg
www.scamalert.sg
