Single mum loses $2,300 to SingPost SMS scam
A single mother lost $2,300 of her savings after responding to an SMS that she thought was from Singapore Post (SingPost).
Netizen Begum shared her painful experience with Stomp in hopes that it doesn't befall someone else.
"Being a single mother of four and responsible for the upkeep of my children's studies, bringing food to the table is a challenging daily task," she said.
"However, my life stressor shot to maximum when I was scammed by a fake SingPost SMS asking me to pay for delivery fees for school-based stationery that I bought for my children."
She believed everything was normal when the website redirected her to a bank to pay for the delivery.
"Within the same day, I lost almost $800," said Ms Begum, who showed Stomp the deductions from her account.
"I made a report as soon as possible and blocked my cards, but several further transactions under earmarked funds took over and the bank could not do anything."
She lost $2,298.62 in total from Nov 23 to 26. "This is a big amount of money which I had saved slowly for contingency purposes. I made a police report and asked DBS if it could reinstate the amount, but till today, it has been unable to help."
In response to a Stomp query, the police confirmed a report was lodged.
Ms Begum said: "Every day, I am losing my sanity thinking about this matter and blaming my hopelessness for my unintentional mistake. Will grace be shown to a single mother who is trying to bring up her children?
"I am losing hope of anyone assisting me to reclaim my hard-earned savings of three years."
She added: "Please, scammers, have a heart for us low-SES families."
On its website, SingPost warns of scammers using SMS disguised as delivery notifications to target SingPost customers by tricking them into accessing fake websites to make payments or to provide sensitive personal information. Payments to SingPost can be done only via the SingPost mobile app, at SAM machines or any post office but never through an online link.
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