Jail for second man over ruse to buy luxury goods with scam victims’ credit card details

SINGAPORE – A second Taiwanese man, linked to a ruse in which

scam victims’ credit card details were used to buy luxury goods worth over $30,000 in Singapore

, was sentenced to two years and four months’ jail on Feb 11.

Lu Min-da, 25, had pleaded guilty to four counts of cheating involving more than $19,000. Seven other charges linked to the remaining amount were considered during his sentencing.

His accomplice, Lu You-ting, then 28, was

also sentenced to two years and four months’ jail

in November 2025.

They had worked with a syndicate, and Deputy Public Prosecutor Daniel Ong told the court that the two Taiwanese men had known each other for a number of years. Court documents did not disclose if they are related to each other.

DPP Ong added 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, 2025, 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 then 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 they would use the application to buy luxury items in Singapore.

The two men arrived in Singapore on April 1, 2025, with plans to return to Taiwan two days later.

They then took instructions from Luo to visit some stores at Marina Bay Sands (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.

The prosecutor 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 to 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, 2025, the two men 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.

Their instructions were to first ask the sales staff to take out the items Luo had selected. They would then take photographs of the items with their personal mobile phones and send 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 prices of the items.

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

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

Using such a method, Lu Min-da entered a Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery store at MBS shortly after 1pm on April 2, 2025, and bought a pendant worth $4,400.

The two men later committed similar offences at Chanel and Louis Vuitton stores.

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

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

They were charged in court on April 4, 2025.