SINGAPORE — There have been 14 reports of scams linked to fake Lazada campaigns on Instagram and at least S$14,000 have been lost to fraudsters, the police said.

The culprits would impersonate as the friends or followers of the Instagram users, telling them to sign up for campaigns by online shopping site Lazada to win money.

In a press release on Tuesday (May 14), the police alerted that common campaign names used include “Lazada Campaign”, “Lazada Raffle”, “Lazada Gift Money” and “Lazada Lucky Draw”.

They would ask the victims for their contact numbers, photos of their credit or debit cards as well as the one-time passwords from their bank accounts to carry out fraudulent transactions.

The victims later realised that they were deceived after discovering unauthorised card transactions on their accounts.

In a statement sent to the media on Tuesday night, Lazada said that it is "in no way associated with these scams".

"All our campaigns and contests are held only on our website, app and official social media accounts," it added. "We would like to remind customers to only conduct transactions on our platforms — never via third-party channels." 

In a separate news release, the police said that a 31-year-old man was arrested for his suspected involvement in at least 10 cases of e-commerce scams amounting to more than S$37,000.

They received several reports last month and this month from victims who have fallen prey to a seller offering room rental services on Facebook and iLivesg.com.

The seller could not be contacted after they had paid a money deposit.

The suspect for this case will be charged in court on Wednesday.

If convicted of cheating, he could be jailed up to 10 years and fined.

The police advised members of the public to be wary when giving out personal information, especially credit or debit card and bank account details to strangers they meet online.

They should also be mindful that although sellers may provide Singapore bank account numbers and copies of their identification cards to gain your trust and enhance credibility, these may not necessarily belong to the sellers or the people communicating to buyers online.