Lured by cheap drinks online, woman loses nearly $200k after downloading fake shopping app

All she wanted was to buy some drinks, but she ended up being scammed of almost $200,000 via several fraudulent bank transfers.

The woman had fallen victim to a fake shopping app scam which left her bereft of the money, Lianhe Zaobao reported yesterday (July 18). 

The 56-year-old woman, surnamed Li, shared that on June 4, she had reached out to a "grocery store" on Facebook page to buy some drinks as they were very cheap.

After providing her phone number at their behest, she was contacted via WhatsApp.

"They asked me to download their company's mobile app, saying that I can place my orders through that.

"After I downloaded the app, I felt something was amiss and didn't correspond with the 'shop'," Li told Zaobao.

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Li was later informed by the 'shop' that they had given her $20 for opening an account with them, but she ignored them out of suspicion and didn't check if the amount was received.

She then consulted her nephew, who suggested she delete the app from her phone.

A few days later, Li received a WhatsApp message asking her to return $128 that had been mistakenly transferred to her via PayNow, and that the money was meant to save the life of the sender's sick girlfriend.

As Li didn't like making online banking transfers, she asked her nephew to help make the transfer instead.

That same day, she discovered an app called Compass For Android on her phone, which she did not recall downloading. She managed to delete the app with another person's help.

Her nephew subsequently found two other suspicious applications on her phone two days later and deleted them.

However, Li later found out that eight transfers had been made out of her account, amounting to $199,996, the Chinese-language broadsheet reported.

"I immediately contacted the bank to freeze my account and also called the police," Li recounted.

'They told me there were too many cases'

A week after she lodged her report with the Ang Mo Kio police division, she received a call from someone claiming to be a police officer from the Woodlands division.

Li recalled: "They told me there were too many cases [in Ang Mo Kio] and so this case had to be transferred to them."

The 'officer' shared that he could help 'unfreeze' her account and scheduled a meetup with her in Woodlands.

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Once she put down the call, however, Li realised that the number that this 'officer' had used was the same number used by the person who claimed to have 'mistakenly transferred' the $128 earlier, so she made another police report.

Li added that the incident happened over a month ago and she has not received any updates from the police or from the bank.

Responding to queries by Zaobao, the police confirmed that they have received Li's two reports, and that investigations are still ongoing.

They added that between June 1 to July 12 this year, at least 134 people have fallen for similar scams, losing at least $375,000. 

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khooyihang@asiaone.com

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