Need cash? Sign up for phone line
[Photo: Mr Seng Soon Meng, 50, holding up mobile phone bills from two telco operators.]
By Geraldine Yeo, newsroom intern
NEED cash fast? Above 18 and have an IC?
Then just call the handphone number listed in the advertisement, do what you're told and you'll be paid $500.
Incredulous? But Mr Seng Soon Meng, 50, fell completely for it, thinking it was a great opportunity to make a quick buck.
After all, both he and his 22-year-old Vietnamese wife are unemployed and they needed money to supplement their household income.
True enough, the deal was too good to be true.
Not only did Mr Seng not make any money, he's now saddled with almost $3,600 in termination fees that he claims he cannot afford to pay.
Mr Seng claimed he saw the ad on 7 Feb.
It said: Need Cash? Just sign up for a new line!
Seduced by the prospect of easy cash, he sent an SMS to the number listed.
Less than a minute later, a man, Sam, called back.
He told Mr Seng to meet him at noon at the Tiong Bahru Plaza taxi stand the next day.
'He said he wanted me to sign up for a few handphone lines under my name and that I would be paid $500 for each line,' said Mr Seng.
Naively, he did as he was told. After meeting, they took a taxi to the StarHub shop at Plaza Singapura.
At Sam's instructions, Mr Seng signed up for three handphone lines under the 3G PowerValue 700 plan, which came with free handphones.
According to the StarHub website, the two-year plan's basic monthly subscription fee costs $82.93.
Said Mr Seng: 'Sam said he would take the handphones while I could keep the three SIM cards.'
As Mr Seng had signed up for three handphone lines, Sam said he would be paid $1,500.
2 more lines
Sam's friend, Kelvin, then came to pick both men up at about 2pm and drove them to the EpiCentre@Orchard, a SingTel dealer shop, where he was told to sign up for two more mobile lines.
For each line, he would be paid $800.
This time, he was asked to sign up for two iThree Plus plans , each of which came with a free iPhone.
Under this two-year plan, the monthly subscription fee for each line is $192.60.
After handing all the phones over, Sam asked Mr Seng to take a taxi to Bishan to meet a third man at Bishan MRT station.
There, he was told, was where he could collect his payment.
'However, there was nobody to meet me when I went there,' said a distraught Mr Seng.
After subsequent phone calls to Sam, he was then told to wait at the void deck of another block, which was about a 10-minute walk away.
Again, no one turned up to hand him the money.
Finally realising that the whole thing might have been a scam, Mr Seng made a report at the Bishan Neighbourhood Police Post at around 5pm.
But the bigger shock for him was yet to come.
Mr Seng terminated all five SingTel and StarHub mobile phone lines the next day.
But on 7 Mar, he received two SingTel and three StarHub bills amounting to about $3,600 in total - for early termination of the lines.
Mr Seng panicked, and wrote to both telcos to appeal.
SingTel agreed to waive the early termination charges for one of his SingTel lines.
However, he says he still cannot afford the remaining sum of more than $3,000 as both he and his wife are not working.
Mr Seng claims that he suffers from schizophrenia, and that his condition has prevented him from holding on to a job. His last job was that of a security guard some two years ago. His family is also on financial assistance under the South West Community Development Council.
For now, he can only hope that both telco operators will allow him to terminate the lines without having to pay the penalty.
Mr Seng admits that he was 'too trusting'.
He added: 'Sam told me that I would not even have to pay any subscription fee as long as I didn't activate the line.'
A police spokesman said they are investigating the case. He added that two other similar cases have been reported since last year.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
Need cash? Sign up for phone line 
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