A 25-year-old man, Ronny Lee Jia Jie, opened a fake business account on food delivery platform FoodPanda twice in 2020. Exploiting the loopholes in the food delivery platform’s accounting system, he ordered $174,500 worth of food and goods without paying.
Ronny Lee opened the first fake company account in January 2020. He then worked as an administrator at his father’s ship repair company, Hestia Marine, but pretended to be the company’s director of human resources and registered a company account on FoodPanda without his father’s knowledge or permission.
The company account has a 30-day refund period on the foodpanda platform. This means that when you use this account, you do not have to pay for the item immediately after ordering. Instead, payments can be added up at the end of the month.
From January 20 to April 5, 2020, Ronny Lee used this account to order 132 food items on the FoodPanda platform, totaling $18,723.70. When he was urged to pay by Delivery Hero, FoodPanda’s operating company, he shied away because he couldn’t arrange payment. Finally, the account was blocked in July.
After that, Ronny Lee opened a second account in Mediacorp’s name, even though he was not an employee of Mediacorp.
From August 14 to November 3, 2020, he used the second account to order 365 meals, surgical masks, etc., totaling $155,816.20.
Deputy Prosecutor Jesudevan said the food was eaten by Ronny Lee, who also ordered surgical masks that he resold to make money through e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Carousell.
In addition, when Ronny Lee was summoned to appear in court on December 5, he forged a letter from his school stating that he could not attend the court hearing because he had to take an exam.
If found guilty of fraud or forgery, he could be punished with up to ten years in prison and a fine.
On January 19, Ronny Lee pleaded guilty to two charges of cheating and one charge of forgery and was sentenced to 31 months in prison.
