Woman fakes PayNow receipt, scams hawker, 70, of S$55.50 at East Coast Lagoon Food Village

A 70-year-old hawker selling satay at East Coast Lagoon Food Village was scammed of S$55.50 after a young woman created a fake PayNow transfer receipt.

It was only when Seth Foo, 40, saw recent reports of other cases of faked PayNow receipts that he checked the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage from his father's stall.

He said he noticed a woman who displayed similar antics to the "Houdini payment techniques" he'd seen employed in previous cases.

This led Foo to check the stall's earnings.

He was able to trace the records of physical cashier receipts issued, and found the S$55.50 purchase which matched the time of the CCTV footage.

He also checked the PayNow transactions and realised there was no matching S$55.50 transfer at that time, and that his father had also become a victim of a PayNow scam.

Speaking to Mothership, Foo said the incident had occurred on Dec. 14, 2024.

The lady had bought a mixture of pork belly, chicken wings, and mutton satay, shared Foo.

"We only had 2 PayNow transactions that day that was amounting to [more than] S$50. We retraced through the NETS app and found only this lady’s payment wasn’t through," Foo explained.

Addressing the possibility that the woman may have transferred the money to the wrong account by accident, Foo pointed out that the stall uses a QR code for PayNow transactions.

In the footage of the alleged scam seen by Mothership, the lady appeared preoccupied and actively using her phone while placing her order at the stall.

The lady could be seen performing swiping and zooming actions on her phone at various points in the clip.

She was on her phone for around 40 seconds, before apparently scanning the QR code on the right hand side of the stall:

She then showed her phone screen to the stall's staff.

Sharing that this was the first time their stall had encountered such behaviour, Foo said that a police report was not made as his father "didn't want to make [this incident] big".

Wants to alert other hawkers

However, Foo shared that they had wanted to use this incident to "let our fellow hawker heroes know", for them to "be careful when dealing with digital payments".

He urged fellow hawkers to check for indications that a PayNow confirmation screen was authentic, such as ensuring it was a non-static page and looking out for animations.

He also called for customers' help with this, saying:

"Please be patient with us fellow hawkers and not get irritated whenever we ask to check on the payment status."

Previous cases

There have been a number of previous cases of businesses getting scammed via fake PayNow screenshots.

However, it is not known whether the same person was involved in each of the cases.

In an August 2024 incident, a woman allegedly pretended to settle a S$272.25 bill at an East Coast Road cafe with a screenshot of a PayNow receipt that she apparently doctored on the spot.

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Top image screenshot from video provided by Seth Foo