In a bizarre incident that occurred on July 14 at around 5:45 pm, a driver in Bedok had a peculiar encounter with a man attempting to scam him while parking his car.
The driver, Chan Ti Eu, aged 44, captured the incident on his car’s dashcam, providing evidence of the alleged scam attempt.
What happened
As Chan Ti Eu was reversing his car into a parking lot, he heard a continuous beeping sound, indicating an obstacle behind his vehicle.
Upon checking the rearview mirror, he noticed a man dressed in a grey shirt crossing the parking lot. Responding quickly, Chan applied the brakes to avoid any potential collision.
However, the man continued to walk forward, seemingly waving to someone on the side, and unexpectedly collided with the car. The “impact” sent him tumbling backward, with his legs briefly suspended in the air as he fell dramatically.
Chan Ti Eu documented the peculiar incident in a video titled “How I almost got scammed in a carpark.” He shared this video on his Facebook page two days after the encounter, on July 16.
Upon exiting his car to check on the man, Chan found him lying on the ground, moaning in pain, with a fake graze on his right knee.
The man identified himself as a cleaner and asserted that he had rushed over to the car park to assist another individual.
He blamed Chan for knocking him down but insisted on avoiding involving the police, requesting monetary compensation instead. He claimed that he needed money to visit a doctor for his injuries.
When Chan offered the man S$50 for medical expenses, the man surprisingly demanded S$100 instead. Sensing something amiss, Chan offered to share his contact details so the man could provide the medical bill later.
However, the man refused, stating he had no money for the consultation in the first place. This refusal raised Chan’s suspicions, prompting him to review the dashcam footage to verify the incident.
Lacking a card reader to access the footage, Chan called his sister, who lived nearby, for assistance. While waiting, the man vanished from the scene, adding further weight to the suspicion that he might have been attempting to scam the driver.
After reviewing the dashcam footage, Chan noticed that the man appeared to deliberately ignore the approaching car and that the vehicle was stationary when the collision occurred.
Convinced that he had narrowly avoided falling victim to a scam, Chan immediately reported the incident to the police.
Providing them with the evidence captured on the dashcam, he hoped that this information would help the authorities investigate and prevent any similar scams in the future.