Woman nearly falls prey to 'handsome' scammer on FB
A woman nearly fell prey to a 'handsome' scammer, but was saved by her husband in the nick of time.
Ms Qin, who is in her 30s, told Shin Min Daily News that she had posted a rental advertisement in a Facebook group in early March. A man named Yan Zhihao responded to express his interest.
Yan claimed to be from Hong Kong and that he was head of Information Technology (IT) at a telecommunications company.
He also said he had been assigned to a futures trading company to work on a project and was coming to Singapore for one year.
Yan then told Ms Qin that he was satisfied with the room that she was renting out, and could sign the contract and move in immediately.
As Yan had shown her his company's employee ID card, Ms Qin did not suspect anything amiss and agreed to rent out her room.
"He said his company would pay the rent and even generously offered to pay for a year at once, but needed three to five days to complete the application," said Ms Qin,
During this time, Yan kept chatting to her about day-to-day topics and shared about his life in Hong Kong.
He also claimed that he had divorced his Russian wife and was raising his daughter alone while caring for his ailing mother.
Ms Yan now believes he did it to gain her trust.
One day, Yan said he wanted to do a simple test on his company's platform but was unable to use his mobile phone.
Ms Qin recounted: "He claimed to have seen abnormal activity in the company's data and needed to check it to 'make money'. He asked me to use my mobile phone to help check it."
Yan then sent her a website link, where she was asked to enter the account username and password that he had provided.
After she did as requested, Yan said he made tens of thousands of dollars in profit through this data fluctuation. He then encouraged Ms Qin to register an account on the website and inject funds for investment.
"He told me not to tell anyone about this or I would not have the chance to make money," Ms Qin added.
Wanting to be cautious, she sought her husband's opinion on the matter. He immediately knew it was a scam and stopped her from investing money.
The following day, Ms Qin told Yan that she was just a housewife and could not afford to invest. However, he kept questioning her.
Ms Qin said: "I changed the subject and asked him to send me his passport details for the room rental, but he kept avoiding the topic and eventually stopped texting."
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