The Singapore Police Force (SPF) revealed today that from January to May 2014, at least 27 cases have been reported by online sellers who’d been cheated of about $33,000 in total after receiving fake Paypal payment notification emails from scammers.
The scammers, claiming to be from overseas, placed orders with the victims who advertised on online platforms. They’d then select ‘Paypal’ or ‘Citibank’ as a payment option and send the victims fictitious emails supposedly from the two companies to notify them that payment had been made.
The online sellers would then send the ‘purchased’ items to addresses overseas.
Police say the scammers would also send fictitious emails from ‘Paypal’ requesting for admin payments such as account activation fees to be made via local bank account transfers or through remittance to overseas accounts.
SPF advises online sellers to adopt the following crime prevention measures:
i. Always log-in to your Paypal account to verify payment status before sending merchandise. Do not follow links in email when you log in but instead, open a new browser and navigate to its website Paypal.com to log in; and
ii. Should Paypal require your personal details such as bank account or credit card numbers, you would be asked to log-in to your Paypal account to provide such information. Never provide your personal details via email.
Photo: AFP
