Jail for man over ruse to buy luxury goods worth over $30k with scam victims’ credit card details

SINGAPORE – Working with a syndicate, two Taiwanese men came to Singapore and

used scam victims’ credit card details to buy luxury goods

worth more than $30,000 in total.

Lu Min-da, 25, and Lu You-ting, 28, had shopped at Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Van Cleef & Arpels stores at places including Marina Bay Sands (MBS) on April 2.

On Nov 10, Lu You-Ting was sentenced to two years and four months’ jail after he pleaded guilty to four cheating charges linked to luxury goods worth more than $20,000.

Seven other charges involving the remaining amount were considered during his sentencing. Lu Min-da’s case is pending.

Court documents do not disclose if the men are related to each other.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Daniel Ong told the court that a total of seven credit cards, each linked to a distinct cardholder, were used to commit the offences.

Investigations revealed that the cardholders were victims of various e-commerce phishing scams.

On March 31, Lu You-ting received a text message from a woman identified as Luo Pei Min, who told him about a job opportunity.

It involved travelling to Singapore to buy luxury goods, which would then be resold in Taiwan.

Lu You-ting, who was promised a share of the profits, informed Lu Min-da about the job opportunity.

Both men later contacted Luo and accepted the job.

Luo then arranged for the men to be issued with two mobile phones, which had an application known as TapPay to make contactless payments through the use of tokenised credit cards.

Luo told the men that they would use the application to buy luxury items in Singapore.

The two men arrived in Singapore on April 1, with plans to return to Taiwan two days later.

After they arrived in Singapore, they took instructions from Luo to visit some stores at MBS and snap pictures of the goods on sale.

This was for her to choose the items the men would purchase the next day.

She later told the men to provide the staff of the stores with fictitious information should they be asked for their contact details.

DPP Ong said: “She also provided them with templates of fictitious signatures and instructed the accused persons to practise signing them... in the event their signatures were required.

“She further informed them that they would be added into a Telegram chat group with other unknown individuals based in mainland China, and that they were to take directions from them and herself.”

On the morning of April 2, they were added to a Telegram chat group made up of Luo and other unknown individuals, who were part of a syndicate.

Through the chat group, Lu You-ting and Lu Min-da were instructed to use their personal mobile phones to join an audio conference call on an application called Voov Meeting.

The pair were then told to listen to instructions given to them over the call via Bluetooth earpieces, and to remain in the call throughout the day.

The men were also given detailed instructions on how to buy the luxury items.

They would first ask the sales staff to take out the items Luo had selected.

The men were also told to use their personal mobile phones to snap photographs of the items before sending the pictures to Luo and the others.

After receiving the go-ahead to buy the goods, the pair would inform their accomplices via the conference call about the price of the items.

The unknown individuals would then remotely load the details of certain credit cards onto the TapPay application to tokenise them.

The two men would approach the cashier at the store to pay for the items by using the application.

The DPP said: “The accused persons were instructed that they should make payments in separate transactions as far as possible.

“They were also informed that should an attempt at payment be unsuccessful, they were to inform the unknown individuals through the conference call, who would then load another tokenised credit card onto the TapPay application. They were then to attempt payment again using the new tokenised credit card.”

Using this method, the men went to a Chanel store at MBS at around 11am on April 2 and bought multiple pieces of costume jewellery worth more than $4,200 in total.

They later went to the other stores to buy more luxury items, the court heard.

On the same day, the police received a call about a suspicious credit card transaction made at a certain unnamed luxury goods store.

The two Taiwanese men were arrested in their hotel room that evening, and luxury items worth more than $30,000 in total were recovered.