Singapore — A loan shark is thought to be behind the latest case of harassment. The man placed an order for a whole roast pig to be delivered to an address in a Tampines HDB estate.
Mr Hu Shi Ming, 58, who owns a roast meat business took the order on Tuesday at around 5 pm from a man who gave his name as Li, reports the Chinese-language newspaper Shin Min Daily News.
The trickster who placed the order told Mr Hu to deliver the pig the next day to a unit at Block 827A Tampines Street 8.
But he wouldn’t pay in advance, insisting that the order be cash on delivery. He apparently told Mr Hu that he could inform the police if he did not receive payment.
That may have been the clincher. Business had been poor, and Mr Hu would have been eager to get a big food order.
But when he arrived at the address given, no one answered the door. So he took a photo of the door and sent it to Li, who told him to continue waiting.
In all, Mr Hu said he waited there for four hours, and his calls to Li went unanswered. When he called Li using another phone, the trickster told him to collect payment from the helper in the unit.
Mr Hu knew he had been tricked when residents nearby told him that the unit was occupied by a Malay widower in his seventies and his domestic helper. Someone who is Malay and an observant Muslim would never have ordered pork, much less an entire pig.
“This is my hard-earned money; how can they do this?” said Mr Hu, saying he accepted the order as business had been bad. And now, he had lost out on about S$188 on that bogus order. He made a police report.
Shin Min Daily News reported that the number Li used to make the order was linked to a business providing “financial services.”
Police investigations are ongoing.
Mr Hu says he will no longer take cash-on-delivery orders.
This incident is one of a rash of reports involving fraudulent food delivery orders. Sometimes, multiple orders are sent to one address, or one particular address is repeatedly peppered with a succession of fake orders.
In June this year, some $1,000 worth of food was “ordered” for delivery to a flat in Fernvale, in northern Singapore.
An address in Yishun was repeatedly targeted in this way in April and the family that lived there said that nobody had borrowed from unlicensed moneylenders.
In March this year, a spate of fake FoodPanda orders was linked to loan sharks harassing debtors.
One of the latest incidents was on May 31, when residents of Block 468C Fernvale Link received several orders of food booked by an individual who called himself “Saju Man.”
No fewer than 10 food delivery riders arrived at the destination, bearing combined orders worth S$1,000.
The police said there is “zero tolerance for loan shark harassment activities. Those who deliberately cause annoyance and disruption to the public sense of safety, peace and security will be arrested and dealt with severely in accordance with the law.” /TISG
Read related: Loan sharks strike again? Fake food orders totalling S$1,000 delivered to Fernvale
Loan sharks strike again? Fake food orders totalling S$1,000 delivered to Fernvale