SINGAPORE: People have lost at least S$59,000 (US$46,008) since Aug 1 to scams involving the online sale of ez-link cards, with the police warning the public to be careful of such ruses.
In a statement on Sept 11, the police said there have been at least 45 cases of phishing scams involving advertisements on Facebook and Instagram pretending to be from EZ-Link, SimplyGo or the Land Transport Authority.
In this type of scam, advertisements or posts on social media platforms would offer enticing promotions on ez-link cards giving unlimited travel for a low fare.
After clicking on links in these posts, victims would be redirected to phishing sites such as sigmatheta.org, bestcarspage.com and costarica-homeschool.com
They would then be prompted to key in their credit or debit card details, banking information and one-time passwords to buy the cards.
Victims would realise that they have been scammed after discovering unauthorised transactions in their bank accounts or on their credit cards. In some cases, the fraudulent transactions were made to firms such as Grab, Gojek or Indonesian e-commerce platform Tokopedia.
“All promotions for ez-link cards are conducted only on SimplyGo websites and the social media pages of SimplyGo and EZ-Link,” said the police.
They added that SimplyGo does not offer promotions such as “Celebrate Singapore’s 60th Anniversary EZ-Link Unlimited Travel for 12 months for S$8.00”, or “SG60 anniversary EZ-link card”. - The Straits Times/ANN
