Jail for man who opened over 2,000 bogus accounts to receive nearly $28,000 in mall vouchers

Upon the successful registration of each new member, both the new member and the referring member would receive $5 e-vouchers credited to their respective Marina Square membership accounts for use at the mall’s stores.

To complete their registration, new members had to verify their identities by keying in a one-time password (OTP) that would be sent to their mobile devices.

As part of his job, Aravindran could access an in-house customer relationship management system through a computer terminal located at the information counter.

Through the portal, he could view information such as store listings, member lists and voucher issuance details.

His direct supervisor’s account on the same portal also allowed the user to view all OTPs that had been generated and sent out.

For convenience, the supervisor shared his log-in details with Aravindran so that the latter “could assist customers whenever they needed assistance to obtain their OTPs without having to consult (the supervisor)”, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Ryan Lim.

Between May 13, 2024, and April 3, 2025, Aravindran created 2,172 fraudulent accounts in the Marina Square membership phone application.

DPP Lim added: “The accused circumvented the account verification process by generating fake phone numbers using ChatGPT, and would populate the membership sign-up forms in the Marina Square phone application with these fake phone numbers.

“He would then manually obtain the OTPs… thereby allowing him to complete the registration of the fraudulent accounts using the fake phone numbers.”

In total, Aravindran cheated MCH on more than 2,000 occasions.

His offence came to light when the company’s deputy general manager of marketing noticed that certain member accounts were receiving an unusually large number of referral e-vouchers.

MCH then discovered that many of the referred accounts had invalid phone numbers.

Aravindran was caught after a review of internal logs showed that many of the fraudulent accounts shared the same device ID as his own Marina Square membership account.

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