SINGAPORE: After a Reddit user asked for help with verifying dubious information that a contact, who claimed to be in Singapore, had told them, commenters warned that a scammer might target them.
U/BroadFact2 wrote in a post on the r/askSingapore subreddit that they believed they were “being lied to by someone” who claimed to live in Holland Village.
A person they had only recently connected with online claimed that several areas around the city-state were flooding and that some facilities had even been closed.
The contact also said they couldn’t send text messages because of power outages. When the post author searched online to verify these claims, they found no evidence to support them.
“Could anyone please confirm if there are any current significant events occurring in Singapore? If so, I would be grateful if you could provide a link to any relevant information,” the post author wrote.
As readers can probably imagine, many commenters on the post were highly suspicious of u/BroadFact2’s contact and warned them it might be a scam.
“Are they using retro telegram to send messages? Why would a power outage affect their phone? Power outage happens like once in 10 years, and the one I experienced (in the year 2000) lasted only 30 minutes.
OP, if you are even asking this question, I suggest you cut any form of contact with them ASAP. It is obviously a scam,” was the most upvoted answer.
“So how do they send messages once they step out of the door….? I can’t fathom anyone surviving in Singapore without a mobile plan, and a data plan in Singapore is dirt cheap,” another commenter asked.
A Reddit user called it a “100% a pig butchering scam,” which happens when someone gains the trust of a person over time and convinces them to invest their money in something sketchy.
“They haven’t asked you for anything yet because it’s a long con and they have time. Scammers love to use Singapore because of our safe & trusted reputation. They’re probably in Cambodia,” they added.
“Holland Village is not a real village, just a historical name of an urban housing area. The last power outage was in 2018, lasting all of 38 minutes, and never to such a scale that sending text messages is an issue,” a commenter explained.
“It’s also one of the more fancy housing areas in the entire country because of the large number of foreign expats living there. Sounds like some overseas scammer who googled town names in Singapore and chose it because of the ‘village’ name,” another added.
“Holland Village is an upmarket area. No flooding in Singapore. No power outage in Singapore,” one wrote.
In an update to the post, u/BroadFact2 wrote, “Thank you all for your assistance and for confirming that there are no issues, which I had already suspected. I will proceed to block him, and no harm has been done.” /TISG
Read also: 2 SG men deported from Cambodia; Thailand charged for targeting S’poreans with scams
