SINGAPORE – When her parents noticed that food delivery payment for their hawker business was still not in after two weeks, Ms Pooja decided to check their account information.
She found that the bank account number for the payment for delivery orders on foodpanda had been changed.
The transaction history showed that between Oct 10 and 14, about $3,000 was paid to an unknown bank account, said Ms Pooja, 36.
She suspected that her parents had been the victims of a scam.
Ms Pooja, who declined to give her full name, made a police report on Oct 24. She also contacted Grab, foodpanda and Deliveroo.
Her parents, who run a stall selling Indian food, have been working with food delivery platforms for seven years, and this is the first time they have fallen prey to a scam.
“They were upset because it is a decent amount of money that we lost,” she said. “At the same time, my parents have gone through a lot of challenges, so they were not really fazed by it.”
Her parents had to stop food delivery orders on foodpanda for a week after that to rectify security issues. They could have made $2,500 during this period, said Ms Pooja, who helps out full time at her parents’ hawker stall in Tampines.
Her family is among food and beverage businesses that have recently fallen prey to scams.
Ms Pooja was speaking to The Straits Times and other media outlets in an online interview on Dec 4 arranged by the police.
In some cases, the victims – the F&B businesses – would receive unsolicited calls from scammers claiming to represent food delivery platforms.
They would then phish for information and use it to access the victims’ food delivery platform accounts or e-mail accounts to maliciously update bank account details, add spoofed e-mail accounts and change account notification settings.
The victims’ earnings would then be diverted to the scammers’ bank accounts or payment service provider accounts.
