Singaporean asks if encounter with migrant worker at Boon Keng MRT is a new scam AURORATOTO GROUP

SINGAPORE: A local Reddit user who had a rather unpleasant encounter with a migrant worker asked others on the platform if this was a new scam to con money out of Singaporeans.

In a post on r/askSingapore on Sunday, u/herdeeary wrote that they had recently been at the MRT station at Boon Keng when they were approached by a foreign worker who told them that he had no money to get back to his dorm.

While they were tempted to just walk on by, they realised that they had only had positive encounters with migrant workers so far, whom they described as “nice and helpful,” and so they thought of helping the man.

Not wanting to give cash, the post author offered to top up the worker’s EZ Link card since the worker at the time was trying to do that. They put S$10 into the worker’s EZ Link card.

However, the man began to ask for cash, telling the post author he wanted to buy a drink as well. Moreover, the worker took a look into the post author’s wallet and said, “I see you have S$2, can you give me?”

This annoyed the post author, especially since they had seen that the worker had over S$3 in his EZ Link, which means he could have got back to his dorm.

“Anyway, has anyone encountered this before? I am still not sure if he is a scammer posing as a migrant worker or just a desperate person?” the post author asked.

Reddit users who commented on the post tended to believe that this was something a few individuals were doing, rather than a large-scale scam.

Others pointed out with dismay that it gave honest migrant workers, who form the majority of such workers in Singapore, a bad name.

A commenter on the post wrote that they had a similar encounter at the Boon Keng MRT station.

“I live near Boon Keng MRT and was approached before by a migrant worker asking to exchange SGD with ringgits. Not sure if it’s the same person, but he seemed quite stressed out at that point in time. He was asking for SGD to top up his EZ Link, but he did try to offer my ringgit in exchange.”

Another wrote that the man had been “doing this for years”.

“I believe this type of scammer can come from any demographic. My encounter was with a young Muslim lady/girl, stone-faced, who asked me for money to buy food as she was hungry. I said I can buy her food, and she declined, so I noped and walked away,” a commenter chimed in.

“In this day and age, there is really no reason for an adult to ask a stranger for cash when they are in a city where they can just pop into a security post or police station, or MRT control centre for help, unless they are scamming or begging. Also, respect to our foreign workers, but just wanna say that in every group of people there’s that 2% to 5% that are outright bad and will harm you. Just saying,” observed another. /TISG

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