Just like bubble tea stores and the coronavirus, you can find payment processing companies everywhere you look.
Many business owners these days, whether they own a brick-and-mortar store or an online commerce platform, go with a payment processor to handle their transactions.
It is the job of the payment processor to send information from your customer’s banking card to both your bank and your customer’s bank during their purchases.
It also prevents fraud, as it checks the details of customers’ cards.
However, despite the security measures in place, three men managed to cheat one particular payment processing company, and got over S$650,000 out of it.
3 Men Allegedly Conspired to Cheat Payment Processing Company of Over $653K
This is how they did it: two of the men – aged between 27 and 30 – handed control of their personal and company bank accounts to a 29-year-old man.
The man then allegedly used these accounts to make over 10 online purchases through a payment processing company between June and July this year.
It’s not clear which platform the transactions took place on. This was step 1 of the plan.
Step 2 involved filing disputes on the online transactions to seek refunds. Through this, the 29-year-old received more than S$653,000 from the payment processing company.
From this amount, the two men allegedly received a commission of around S$9,000, just for giving up control over their bank accounts.
But, as is the case for many lawbreakers, it didn’t end well for the trio.
All Three Alleged Offenders Arrested; Facing up to 10 Years’ Jail
On Thursday (2 Sep), the Commercial Affairs Department arrested all three men for allegedly conspiring to cheat the payment processing company.
The police said yesterday that they received a police report over the incident on 25 Aug.
Investigations are ongoing.
If the men are convicted of abetment with conspiracy to cheat, they can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
Can Be Convicted Even If You’re Not the One Breaking the Law
Do note that even if you don’t participate in illegal activities yourself, you can still get into trouble with the law if someone else uses your bank account for nefarious purposes.
If you’re caught doing this, you could be tried and convicted of assisting others to launder money from criminal activities.
So keep your bank accounts and passwords to yourself, whether a scammer is asking you for them, or someone who claims they can make you a lot of money.
Learn more about online scams here:
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Featured Image: SPF