SINGAPORE: A second man has been sentenced to jail over his part in a ruse duping transport company GrabTaxi Holdings into making payments to some drivers for delivery jobs that were not done.
Loh Jing Jie, 33, was given 10 weeks’ jail on Tuesday (April 14) after he had earlier pleaded guilty to two cheating charges.
He was among the four men charged on Nov 28, 2025, over cheating the company, causing it to incur more than S$58,000 in losses, the police said in November 2025. The court heard that 5,540 fraudulent transactions were made.
Loh’s offences involved nearly $3,900 in total. He has made no restitution.
In March, another of the men, Dzulqarnain Muhamad, 35, whose offences involved more than $13,500, was sentenced to seven months’ jail.
The cases involving the other two men – Alex Wang Xiang Yi, 30, and Lee Yong Ze, 31 – are pending.
According to court documents, five Grab drivers were involved in the ruse, but the fifth person, who was not named, was not charged on Nov 28, 2025.
The drivers had taken advantage of a loophole in the company’s GrabExpress courier service, which pays drivers a commission for every successful delivery.
Should a driver fail to make the delivery, he must return the item to the sender and indicate on the Grab mobile application that the parcel was returned.
Grab will then cancel the delivery job and pay the driver for each attempted delivery.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jheong Siew Yin said the drivers behind the fraudulent transactions would accept GrabExpress bookings and immediately indicate on the application that the parcel was returned.
In reality, they had made no attempt to collect the items.
Court documents did not state if the affected senders alerted Grab when no one came to collect the items for delivery.
The DPP said each of the five drivers also operated multiple Grab driver accounts under the names of other people but used their own profile photos.
The DPP added: “These drivers also exploited the fact that Grab did not conduct cross-checks of the profile photos of Grab drivers.”
The prosecutor told the court that Wang told Loh about the “loophole” in April or May 2025.
According to court documents, Wang then offered a 50-50 split of earnings should Loh relinquish his Grab driver account to him so that Wang could exploit the loophole. Loh agreed to the arrangement.
Then in June 2025, Loh decided to exploit the loophole independently.
Between June 9 and 16 that year, he used his own account and duped Grab into believing he had carried out 108 attempted deliveries, inducing it to pay more than $1,500 into a Grab wallet.
On or around June 18 that year, Loh contacted another man, identified only as “A1” in court documents, and asked the latter to open a Grab driver account.
The DPP said: “The accused never told A1 about the loophole or the reason why he needed A1’s Grab driver account.”
Between June 27 and July 11, 2025, Loh repeatedly exploited the loophole with A1’s account, deceiving Grab into believing that he had carried out 145 attempted deliveries. The company then paid more than $2,300 into a Grab wallet.
During internal checks, Grab detected 5,540 fraudulent transactions from 24 Grab driver accounts operated by the five drivers.
Loh was arrested on Aug 6, 2025. - The Straits Times/ANN
