SINGAPORE — At least 13 victims have fallen prey to a “new variant” of a job scam involving a travel company, with their total losses exceeding S$38,000 since Jan this year, the police said on Monday (March 7).
Urging the public to take precautionary measures, the police said these victims were invited to participate in jobs that allowed them to earn high commissions by reviewing travel attractions and packages in a “new variant” of job scam, it said in an advisory.
Scammers claiming to be job recruiters approached the victims via online messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Telegram. They also impersonated Anywhr, a Singapore-headquartered travel company, to make their ruse more believable, the police said.
Anywhr, a service which plans trips for its customers, is licensed and supported by the Singapore Tourism Board, the company claimed on its website.
Victims who expressed interest in the jobs would then be instructed to sign up for accounts on spoofed websites, and told to top-up their accounts with money in order to review the attractions and earn commissions.
Scammers would then provide victims with bank accounts belonging to unknown individuals for payment to be made, the police said.
To convince the victims that their work was legitimate and to continue topping up their accounts, victims would initially be able to withdraw the commissions. They would only realise later that they had been duped when they were unable to withdraw money from their…
