SINGAPORE: A teenage girl, age 18, tricked three food delivery riders into believing payment of S$415 (US$307) for their food had been made via PayNow after showing edited screenshots. She was sentenced to probation on June 18th, Tuesday.
The girl’s identity cannot be revealed 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. Additionally, she will have to perform 80 hours of community service and attend a smoking cessation program if found suitable for it.
The teenager, now 18, pleaded guilty to two charges: one for engaging in a conspiracy to extort someone and another for conspiring to use a forged PayNow screenshot to cheat a food delivery rider.
Two additional charges, for conspiring to cheat two other food delivery riders of approximately S$128 and S$16, were also considered during her sentencing.
Offense Committed By Teen Girl
In July 2023, an 18-year-old man was accused alongside the girl in the same legal case. The teen girl began editing PayNow screenshots using an application on his phone to make it seem like he had paid delivery riders. He informed the girl that this trick had worked successfully before.
On Jul 12, 2023, both accused conspired with another two friends to order and receive S$271 worth of food from Chinese restaurant Din Tai Fung using the Foodpanda application. The girl placed the food order using her Foodpanda account and deliberately chose cash as the payment method. The girl with her co-accused, went to the lift lobby to collect the food brought by the 52-year-old, food delivery rider at the block. As pre-planned, she claimed she didn’t have cash on hand but assured him that she would transfer the amount to him via PayNow.
The food delivery rider was unaware of using a PayNow account, so he gave his wife’s mobile number instead for the teen to make the money transfer.The teenager proceeded to open a previously saved screenshot of a successful PayNow transaction and edited it so that it falsely showed that S$271 had been paid to the delivery rider’s wife.
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He showed the forged photo to the rider as proof, who trusted that payment had been made and handed the food over. But later that day, he realised that his wife had not received the money.
On top of this, the teenage girl confessed to conspiring with the same co-accused and two others to extort S$500 from a man by accusing him of obtaining sexual favours from an underage girl and they threatened to call the police over this. However, the man didn’t fall for their false accusation and instead called the police, which led to the group leaving the scene.
Receives Probation As Punishment
The prosecution requested reports assessing the girl’s suitability for both probation and reformative training.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Suriya Prakash pointed out 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, was the one who 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.
The teenage girl was unable to repay the S$271 as she did not have the financial means to do so. However she fully compensated the amounts owed to the other two food delivery riders she deceived, totaling about S$144. The prosecutor took this as a sign of regret or guilt.
