SINGAPORE — 25-year-old Ronny Lee Jia Jie masterminded a scam exploiting the popular food delivery platform, FoodPanda. On two separate occasions in 2020, Lee managed to open fake company accounts on the Singapore food delivery app, ordering a staggering $174,500 worth of food and goods without paying a dime.
Ronny Lee opened the first fake company account in January 2020. At that time, he worked as an administrator in his father’s ship repair company Hestia Marine, but he pretended to be the company’s human resources director and registered a company account on FoodPanda without his father’s knowledge or authorisation.
The company account has a 30-day repayment period on the FoodPanda platform. This means that when using this account, there is no need to pay for the item immediately after ordering it. Instead, payments can be aggregated at the end of the month.
From Jan 20 to April 5, 2020, Ronny Lee used this account to order 132 food items on the FoodPanda platform, with a total amount of $18,723.70. When he was urged to pay by Delivery Hero, the operating company of FoodPanda, he shied away because he could not arrange payment. Ultimately, the account was blocked in July.
Afterwards, Ronny Lee opened a second account in the name of Mediacorp even though he was not an employee of Mediacorp.
From Aug 14 to Nov 3, 2020, he used the second account to order 365 meals, surgical masks, etc., totalling $155,816.20.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jesudevan said the food was eaten by Ronny Lee, who also ordered surgical masks that he resold to make money through e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Carousell.
In addition, when Ronny Lee was summoned to appear in court on Dec 5, he forged a letter from his school stating that he could not attend the court hearing because he needed to take an exam.
If found guilty of cheating or forgery, he can be punished with up to ten years in prison and a fine.
On 19 Jan, Ronny Lee pleaded guilty to two charges of cheating and one charge of forgery and was sentenced to 31 months in prison.
Despite this scandal, FoodPanda Singapore continues to be a leading food delivery app, offering Panda delivery Singapore wide. The incident, however, has raised questions about the company’s system checks, particularly in relation to company accounts on the platform, with many users discussing it on the FoodPanda Telegram channel. At the same time, numerous users have been directing their inquiries to the website of FoodPanda contact Singapore, seeking further information and reassurance about the issue.
The post Man who who used app loopholes to trick FoodPanda of $170,000 was sentenced to 31 months in prison appeared first on The Independent News.
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