Woman sent fake PayNow receipts for 59 meals, gets jail term reduced from 21 months to 11

SINGAPORE: A 33-year-old Filipino woman now faces seven charges, including cheating, theft, fraud, and obstruction of justice, because she altered her PayNow transfer screenshots to scam a well-known restaurant, causing her 59 unpaid meals. She pleaded guilty to four of these charges, and the others are to be considered by the judge.

Case details 

As reported by Shin Min Daily News, investigations revealed that the suspect frequently ordered food from a popular seafood restaurant starting May 2022. In order to make her crime successful, she first transferred the money to her own account via PayNow and took a screenshot. Afterwards, she used a photo editing software to change the recipient’s name to the restaurant’s name and sent the receipt to the restaurant to confirm her order. 

Using this method, the suspect stole a total of more than $3,000 worth of meals on 35 occasions between May 2022 and August 2023. Furthermore, the suspect also scammed another restaurant between June 15, 2024 and May 28, 2025 with a total of more than $6,000 on 24 occasions. 

Initially, the judge sentenced her to 21 months and 8 weeks imprisonment. However, in their appeal, their lawyer managed to reduce the suspect’s sentence for the fraud charge from 18 months to 8 months, reducing her total sentence to 11 months and 8 weeks. 

Other related news 

In other similar news related to Singapore crime, there was a report where a woman was caught stealing over $400 worth of items from an aquarium store, notably hundreds of ornamental shrimps, using a thermos in Punggol. 

She was then caught red-handed and arrested by the police.

Read more about the news story here.