Probation for teen girl who tricked food delivery riders using forged PayNow screenshots
The girl and her friends cheated three food delivery riders into believing payment for their food had been made via PayNow after showing edited screenshots.
An e-bike rider in Singapore. (File photo: iStock)
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SINGAPORE: A teenage girl who conspired to trick three food delivery riders into believing that bills totalling S$415 (US$307) had been paid via PayNow was sentenced to probation on Tuesday (Jun 18).
The girl cannot be named as she was under 18 at the time of her offences and therefore protected under the Children and Young Persons Act.
She was sentenced to 18 months' probation, and will also have to perform 80 hours of community service and attend a smoking cessation programme if found suitable for it.
The teenager, who is now 18, pleaded guilty to a charge each of engaging in a conspiracy to extort someone and conspiring to use a forged PayNow photograph to cheat a food delivery rider.
Another two charges for conspiring to cheat another two food delivery riders over bills of about S$128 and S$16 were taken into consideration.
WHAT THEY DID
Sometime before July 2023, the girl's co-accused, an 18-year-old man, began editing PayNow screenshots using an application on his phone to make it seem like he had paid delivery riders.
He told the girl that this scheme had worked before.
On Jul 12, 2023, the pair conspired with another two friends to order and receive about S$271 worth of food from Chinese restaurant Din Tai Fung using the Foodpanda application.
The girl ordered the food using her Foodpanda account and intentionally selected cash as the payment method.
When the food delivery rider, a 52-year-old man, arrived at the block, the girl went to the lift lobby to collect the food with her co-accused.
The co-accused told the delivery rider that he did not have cash on him but would transfer the sum to him via PayNow.
The food delivery rider did not know how to operate his PayNow account, so he gave his wife's mobile number instead for the teen to make the transfer.
The teenager then opened a previously saved screenshot of a successful PayNow transaction and edited it so that it reflected that S$271 had been paid to the delivery rider's wife.
He showed the forged photo to the rider, who trusted that payment had been made and handed the food over.
However, he realised later that day that his wife had not received the money.
On top of this, the teenage girl also admitted to conspiring with the same co-accused and two others to extort S$500 from a man.
The man allegedly tried to obtain sexual favours from an underage girl and they threatened to call the police over this.
However, the man called their bluff and called the police in response, which led to the group leaving the scene.
The prosecution had called for reports assessing the girl's suitability for both probation and reformative training.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Suriya Prakash noted that the girl was not the mastermind in the extortion bid, nor was she the one who showed the forged screenshot to the Foodpanda rider.
Instead, her co-accused, the 18-year-old man, had demanded payment from the extortion victim and prepared the forged PayNow screenshot to display to the rider.
The teenager was sentenced to 24 months' probation in February.
FINANCES TIGHT GROWING UP: DEFENCE
The teenage girl was initially unable to repay the S$271 as she did not have the financial means to do so. However, she eventually made full restitution of the S$271, as well as a total of about S$144 for the amounts relating to the other two food delivery riders she cheated.
The prosecutor took this as a sign of remorse.
The girl was defended by Mr Joshua Tan from Martin & Partners law firm.
Mr Tan said in his mitigation plea that his client's finances at home were tight as her father was the sole breadwinner for a family with five children.
The girl began working part-time outside of her schooling hours while in Secondary 3 to pay for her living expenses.
Mr Tan said his client was extremely remorseful. She was 17 at the time of the offences, and was "young and impetuous and simply swept up in the moment", he added.
The girl has since stopped hanging out with her group of friends and has instead committed herself to her job.
The girl's parents furnished a bond of S$5,000 to ensure her good behaviour during her probation period.
