ST : Online scams on the rise

20 Feb 2011,
Online scams on the rise

Ploys include dangling fake lottery wins and making appeals from hacked accounts
By Irene Tham , Daryl Chin

It seemed too good to be true: A two-bedroom unit near posh Emerald Hill was being advertised on popular website Craigslist for a monthly rental of $2,000.

Such a unit there can command up to $10,000.

Ms Faith Pang had chanced upon the ad in Craigslist, a popular online classified ad site.

But her sharp eye and a good dose of scepticism saved her from the scam.

The online photo of the living room showed a two-pin European power socket, not the three-pin socket used in Singapore.

Ms Pang, a recent graduate, called the supposed home-owner, Steve Mccoy, on his Britain-based number, to find out more.

Speaking in a strong South African accent, he insisted she remit the money to him in Britain before he would send her the keys to the unit. But as soon as she said 'not so fast', he hung up.

'I was lucky,' said Ms Pang, who was looking to rent a flat with her boyfriend.

Over the past four years, more people have fallen prey to online classified ad and e-mail scams.

Just last year, more than 300 people were cheated online, thrice the number in 2009, said the police. This is a spike from the 64 cases in 2008.

In December last year, Yeo Poh Kwee, 39, a former sales executive, received an 11-month jail sentence for criminal breach of trust. He cheated people of $3,870 on eBay for iPhones and Jay Chou concert tickets which he did not have.

In the case of rental scams, latest police figures show a 21 per cent jump - both online and offline - from about 190 cases in 2009 to more than 230 last year.

There are common tell-tale giveaways in the scams. For one thing, the fraudsters will ask for an advance fee or deposit with the promise of a larger gain later.

A scam may begin with an e-mail with the subject heading 'Your assistance is needed'. The usual storyline: A person knows of a large sum of unclaimed money or gold.

But he cannot access it directly. This person may claim he is a relative of a deposed African leader who has amassed a fortune, or he works in a bank and knows of a terminally ill rich person without relatives.

Another ploy is a 'lottery win'. To claim the winnings, the intended victim has to transfer upfront payments for taxes and bank charges.

There have been victims here.

The largest sum lost to scammers was more than $650,000 in a fake-lottery scam in April last year. The 53-year-old Singaporean man had received a phone call from a bogus company in Hong Kong.

There are also 'reverse' scams in which people posting genuine online ads are targeted by the scam artists.

A 39-year-old manager who wanted to be known only as Miss Tan said she had posted an ad in Craigslist to sell a pair of Yves Saint Laurent rings for $720 in November last year.

She received an e-mail message from someone who did not bother to bargain.

The buyer said that he was paying her an extra $1,000 via PayPal, an online payment service, as he had other goods to be shipped from Singapore. He asked her to wire the $1,000 on his behalf to his shipper in Britain.

That was when Ms Tan smelt a rat.

Meanwhile, security software maker Symantec is seeing more cyber cheats shift to social networking sites by impersonating someone whose account they had hacked.

They figure that people are more likely to respond to e-mail or instant messages sent by a 'familiar' contact.

Another scam involves mining sensitive data such as user names and passwords through e-mail messages that purportedly come from legitimate sources like banks or government agencies.

A month ago, student Chan Xue Wei, 18, received an e-mail message which, at first glance, seemed to be from the Ministry of Education.

She was told to click on a link to update her e-mail account. But, wisely, she did not do that as the URL pointed to 'moe.edu.sg' instead of 'moe.gov.sg'.

itham@sph.com.sg

darylc@sph.com.sg


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How to avoid being cheated

· Deal with people you can meet face to face.

· Never wire funds via money transfer agencies such as Western Union or MoneyGram to someone unknown to you.

· Do not accept cashier's cheques and money orders when selling online. Banks will honour them but will hold you responsible if these turn out to be fakes.

· Do not give out personal information like bank account number, identity number or eBay/PayPal account details.

· Avoid deals involving shipping or escrow services. An escrow agent is a neutral third party that holds documents, money or securities in a transaction until certain conditions, set out as previously agreed, are fulfilled.

· Do not rent properties or pay for costly items without viewing them.

· Do not comply with credit or background checks for a job or property until you have met the interviewer, landlord or housing agent.

· Always submit the rental deposit in a cheque payable to the landlord, not the agent.

· For a fee of $2.50, you can use the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's website (www.iras.gov.sg) to check whether a property seller is the rightful owner.