SINGAPORE – A total of eight suspects have been arrested over two separate Ponzi-like job scams.
In the first case, the police said on Sunday (March 20) that they have arrested five men, aged between 18 and 26, over job scams involving an entity known as
E-commerce Affiliate Business (EAB).
Four of them will be charged on Monday with disclosing their Singpass details, which were used to open corporate bank accounts to launder proceeds of cheating.
The arrests were made during an anti-scam operation from March 8 to 18 that also resulted in two other men and seven women aged between 18 and 72 being placed under investigation.
The police said they had acted after receiving several reports of WhatsApp messages, Facebook and Instagram posts as well as online advertisements promoting highly paid part-time jobs related to affiliate marketing.
In the scams, victims would be offered fake online jobs involving easy tasks such as making online purchases. To perform more job tasks and earn their commissions, the victims were told to recruit more members to upgrade their membership status.
In most cases, the victims would be convinced that it was a legitimate job as they would receive commissions and profits during the early stages of their memberships.
Victims would realise that they had been scammed when they did not receive further commissions or were unable to make withdrawals from their member accounts.
Preliminary investigations revealed that EAB is believed to be running Ponzi-like schemes where the new job seekers’ money was used to pay promised commissions to existing job holders.
Investigations also found that four of the five arrested had disclosed their Singpass login details and their own bank accounts to unknown persons for easy money.
If found guilty of disclosing their Singpass details, they will face a maximum fine of $10,000, be jailed for a maximum of three years, or both.
The police are investigating the remaining three men and seven women.
In the second series of arrests, three men aged between 26 and 30 were arrested by the police over Ponzi-like job scams related to a bogus company.
On Thursday, the police received information on an emerging job scam platform where victims received advertisements on messaging apps and social media platforms related to highly paid jobs on the platform.
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