A 55-year-old cleaner lost S$60,000 after falling victim to an investment scam after a stranger called her and claimed he had seen her before in Chinatown.
The man later convinced her to invest in a scheme that could “make money and do good deeds”, before disappearing after collecting the cash over two months.
The woman told Shin Min Daily News that she received a WhatsApp call from an unfamiliar man last October.
The man, who spoke with a China accent and identified himself as “Li Lindong”, claimed he had crossed paths with her in Chinatown.
“At that time, he said he had seen me in Chinatown a few days earlier and called specially to look for me. Since I do occasionally accompany my mother there, I didn’t think too much about it and believed him,” she said.
She added that the man later called her frequently to chat about daily life, and would send her photos of himself driving luxury cars and living in a large home. He even sent her photos of his daughter.
Two weeks later, he invited her to invest in foreign exchange trading, claiming that she could recover her capital “within three months”.
He also told her that if she let him manage the money, they could earn profits and “do charity together”.
“I was initially suspicious, but he swore an oath and said that since he lived in such a big house, how could he possibly cheat me. I don’t know why I listened to him so much,” she said.
She eventually agreed to take out S$10,000 to “invest”. Although the man asked her to download a forex investment app, she did not know how to use it, and he suggested that she hand over cash instead.
Over the next two months, the man asked her to “top up” her investment six times, each time asking for S$10,000. She complied, handing over a total of S$60,000 to a man she had never met.
“Each time, he told me to put the cash into a plastic bag and meet his ‘customer service staff’ at restaurants in shopping malls. Usually, I would have to wait about an hour before someone came to collect the money,” she said.
“What was very strange was that each time, the person who came was different, all young people in their 20s or 30s.”
She added that the man would also send her screenshots of “forex trading”, showing that the investment was supposedly making money.
However, in December last year, the man once again asked her for more funds. When she told him she had no money left, he went silent. It was then that she realised she had been scammed.
“I never went to school, and I can’t understand a single word of those reports. Now that I’ve mustered the courage to speak about my experience, I just hope to remind everyone to be very careful and not to trust others so easily,” she said.
