Another cleaning service scam: Woman loses over $20,000 to bogus company she found on Facebook

After a woman came forward last week to say she lost $4,300 to scammers posing as a house cleaning service, it turns out that another woman suffered an even greater loss, discovering that more than $20,000 had been transferred from her accounts in a similar tactic.

Ms Ye had been looking for a cleaning company on Facebook, and when she saw one that said it charged only $22 for a four-hour cleaning session every two weeks, she gave the company her contact details. She told Chinese-language news site Shin Min Daily News that this was a very good price indeed. The 40-year-old administrative assistant said that the next day, someone who claimed to be employed with the company messaged her back and told her to download a certain app.

Similar to what happened to Ms Lu Meilin, 47, Ms Ye was asked for a “deposit” of $5 while filling in her debit card details on the app. However, “After I entered my card details, the app said my card was invalid. When I showed the staff, he asked me to try using a credit card instead,” she told Shin Min Daily News.

But when she did so, Ms Ye got the same error message, and another card was requested from her. This raised some red flags with her, and she refused. But by that time, it was too late, as $21,000 had been transferred from her account.

She found out from her bank that 15 transactions in all were done using her cards, with amounts that ranged from $447 to $4,884.

Ms Ye has filed a police report against the bogus cleaning company.

Ms Lu’s experience is nearly identical to Ms Ye’s, except that the former only gave the details to one card. A total of three bank transfers had been made using her card, amounting to $4,300. After this, her bank reached out to tell her the card had surpassed its limit. If her card had not reached its limit, at least one more transaction would have followed.

Ms Lu has since cancelled the card and filed a police report.

Scams are so prevalent these days that Singapore has a dedicated website just for the latest information concerning them, which can be found at www.scamalert.sg. 

It lists the top five types of scams in Singapore, which are, job scams, phishing scams, online purchase scams, investment scams, and loan scams. The site also makes it easy for anyone who’s been victimised by scammers to file online or in-person reports and has a lot of useful information to help scam victims with what they can do.

People with any information about scams may call the police hotline at 1800-255-0000, or submit it online at www.police.gov.sg/iwitness. /TISG

Woman loses $4,300 to scammers posing as a house cleaning service, netizens say she should have known better