| TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2019 | THE STRAITS TIMES | TOPOFTHENEWS A7

Toh Ting Wei

Just $8 for a Gojek ride from Wood-lands to Bugis, $9 for a ride from Marsiling to Changi, and $10 for a di-rect ride from Dhoby Ghaut to Tampines on a Friday evening.

These prices, which could be up to 75 per cent lower than official fares set by ride-hailing company Gojek, are what many passengers across Singapore are believed to have been paying for their rides in the past two months.

But passengers could have been unwittingly benefiting from some-one’s stolen credit card, or even be-come part of a money laundering scheme, according to experts that The Straits Times spoke to.

A compromise of the Gojek app has also been mooted as a reason be-hind the unusually cheap rides.

These scenarios could lead to jail time and fines for the middlemen, said a lawyer, who added that whether passengers could be crimi-nally liable too is a grey area.

In an ST report last month, Gojek had referred to such discounted bookings as suspected scams as some passengers ended up paying more than what was advertised.

But further checks found that at least two dozen middlemen have been providing these Gojek book-ings for possibly hundreds of pas-sengers daily in the past month, judging by postings in the SG Hitch Telegram group.

The online chat group was set up

for drivers and passengers to list carpooling requests and now has some 18,000 members, with as many as 1,800 trip requests daily, mostly from passengers.

Posing as a passenger, this re-porter posted 11 trip requests,which drew responses from 25 mid-dlemen. The cost savings from such rides went as high as $30, such as the journey from Woodlands to Tampines, after surge pricing was taken into account.

Many of the middlemen, who used local mobile numbers, would become uncontactable soon after making the bookings, while some even deleted their accounts.

ST understands that the middle-men would handle the payments to Gojek through credit or debit cards.

Mr Alan Lim, Asia-Pacific prac-tice leader at IBM Blockchain Labs, said these cases could involvecredit card fraud.

But he added that ride-hailing providers had previously reported such schemes where unsanctioned middlemen used stolen credit card credentials to exploit the inability of these companies to verify the cor-rect users of their platforms.

Nanyang Business School Ad-junct Associate Professor ZafarMomin also flagged the bookings as possible credit card fraud.

Security experts at Trustwave said money laundering could also be involved. The US-based security services company, which is owned by Singtel, had previously looked into a money laundering scheme us-

ing the American ride-hailing app Uber. It said: “Knowing what we know about the underground, this could definitely be a money laun-dering scheme.

“If the drivers are not involved

in the case, the scheme could simply work such that the bad actor pays the ride fee with ‘dirty money’, but the fee they receive from the person ordering the ride is ‘clean money’.” Citing the example of a ride from

Woodlands to Bugis for which ST paid $8 instead of the $23 official fare, Trustwave said spending $23 of illicit money to get $8 of clean money was a “very reasonable con-version ratio” for a money launderer.

Ms Reshmi Khurana of Kroll, a firm that helps clients make risk management decisions, said fraudu-lent credit card transactions are usually quickly reported by card holders and addressed by credit card companies, which means that only a small number of transactions can be carried out by fraudsters be-fore the card is blocked.

Ms Reshmi, the firm’s managing director and head of business intelli-gence and investigations in South-east Asia, said it also could be that prices within the system are being manipulated by hackers.

Noting that fast-growing firms would be attractive targets for vari-ous types of scams, she said: “Scam-sters are always one step ahead of companies, which is why compa-nies need to constantly evaluate things like not just cyber security, but also its people and processes.”

In its reply to ST last month, a Go-jek spokesman said it had made a police report and its fraud team was investigating in order to “swiftly re-solve this matter”.

Veteran lawyer Amolat Singhsaid if a crime is involved, the mid-dlemen could face cheating, corrup-tion or computer misuse charges de-pending on the nature of the fraud. But it would be a grey area as to whether passengers are breaking the law by taking the Gojek rides, even if they know that the rides are funded by ill-gotten means.

Mr Singh said this was because the Penal Code covers the offence of receiving stolen property but not services, which a Gojek ride would fall under.

He said: “The difficulty in charg-ing a commuter is that he may gen-uinely believe that there is some sort of a promotion or reward if a payment was made by credit card directly to the driver. After all, the use of discounts or incentives is not uncommon.”

twtoh@sph.com.sg

Online middlemen have been providing cheap Gojek bookings for possiblyhundreds of passengers daily in the past month. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI

Ultra-low Gojek fares? They could be linkedto scams, say experts

How the fraudulent Gojek bookings workPassengerlists trip request in SG Hitch Telegram group

Gojek middleman contacts passenger via private message

1 2 Passenger and middlemanagree on price, usually between50 per cent and75 per cent lower than of�cial fare

3 Middleman sends proof of Gojek booking con�rmation through screenshot or tracking link

Driver arrives and has no knowledge of fraudulent booking

Payment option for trip is shown as credit/debit card in driver’s app, with commission for trip calculated based on of�cial fare

6Passengerpays only the middlemanvia PayNow or Paylah! after trip; payment to Gojek is handled by middleman

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Gojekmiddleman

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Driver DriverGojekmiddleman

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TEXT: TOH TING WEI STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICS

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