A 57-year-old woman lost $461,116 after responding to an online fruit advertisement that was actually a phishing scam in July 2023.
The scammer, 22-year-old Yang Li Hao, was sentenced to 15 months in prison on March 11, 2025.
The victim clicked on a Facebook advertisement to buy fruit and followed instructions from someone pretending to be a fruit vendor. She downloaded what she thought was a shopping application, which was actually malware that gave scammers access to her banking information.
Through this malware, criminals transferred $461,116 from her account to 34 different bank accounts over three days between July 23 and July 26, 2023. The woman filed a police report on July 27 after discovering the unauthorized transactions.
Yang Li Hao was involved in the money laundering part of the scam. Police found that he withdrew $45,000 from one of the accounts where the victim’s money had been transferred.
Court records show Yang made nine separate withdrawals between July 24 and July 25, 2023, at different ATM locations to avoid detection by banking security systems.
Yang was charged under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act for handling the proceeds of crime. He pleaded guilty on March 11, 2025, and will begin serving his 15-month jail sentence on April 11, 2025.
During police questioning, Yang revealed he was added to a Telegram group in April 2023 where anonymous administrators offered “quick money-making opportunities.” After showing interest, he was moved to another private group and received instructions on withdrawing money from various ATMs across Singapore. Yang earned between $50 and $300 as commission for each successful transaction.
