We received not one but four messages on Paid Survey yesterday.
While the first one looked like a genuine request, doubts were raised when
multiple messages of similar content were received as the day went by.
A quick check and this
scam was highlighted last month by Straits Times. The scammers were impersonating CASE officers. In our case, it was
representative of Singsale. While the companies may have changed, the
modus operandi remains the same. The recipients will be invited to participate
in a simple survey of 3 questions.
The questions are as follows
1) Do you use Online Shopping Applications? For example, Qoo10, Carousell,
Lazada, Zalora
2) How Satisfied are you with these apps
3) How old are you.
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The questions are very easy to answer and the reward for answering is a
commission of $15 paid via paynow.
However, there are red flags in the messages.
1) It’s too good to be true; it probably is
Answering a 30 secs survey and earn $15 sounds like easy money. For most
surveys, to earn that kind of money, would require one to spend 2-3 hours
answering a ton of questions and not just 3.
2) The numbers are foreign
While the senders claim that they are representing local companies, the
numbers are foreign. We received messages with country code +234 (Nigeria),
+60 ( Malaysia)
3) Multiple messages, different companies.
The scammers send out similar messages but represent different companies. They
are Singsale and Research Pacific Group Marketing.
Similar Scam
While the Straits Time article did not point out the consequences of replying
to the messages, we uncovered at least
one victim of a similar scam.
The method of scam is similar. The recipient was promised a commission to
answer a simple survey. He did and was subsequently invited to earn more
commissions to like youtube videos. As the recipient was paid for his
commissions, he believed it was legitimate.
The scammers took advantage of his trust and asked him to do other things,
such as invest in cryptocurrency and purchase of products. To do so, he has to
commit his own funds. He did it and did not get his money back. At the end of
the day, the loss was 14K.
Report and Block
The best way to deal with these messages is to report and block the account.
Do not respond to unsolicited messages if you cannot verify the source. You do
not want to end up poorer as a result.
Some tried to scam the scammer by answering the initial questions, get the payment and subsequently do not answer. While this may sound like a good idea, there is a chance that the scammer are using your account to transfer funds from others victims. If this is so, you may be implicated should the scammers be caught.
Here is an exposé on Tiktok
@gilbertzhuo part 1 #scam #singapore ♬ original sound – Gilbert Zhuo
@gilbertzhuo #scam #singapore #crime ♬ original sound – Gilbert Zhuo
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