Kok Sen Restaurant boss makes police report over alleged ‘cockroach in dish’ blackmail scam

SINGAPORE - The owner of a restaurant in Chinatown narrowly avoided paying out hundreds of dollars to an extortion scam after catching a fraudster who digitally edited a cockroach into a customer’s photo.

Jacky Wong, owner of Kok Sen Restaurant – an eatery in Keong Saik Road known for its zi char (or “cook and fry” in Hokkien) dishes – received a WhatsApp message on Oct 31 from an alleged diner who claimed to have found a cockroach in their meal the previous day.

The person demanded $300 in compensation, sending several photos of the “tainted” dish and a receipt for more than $110.

“We panicked and were very worried at the time, so we apologised to the other party and said we would certainly take responsibility,” Wong told Chinese-language newspaper Shin Min Daily News.

However, he soon sensed something amiss when he asked for a week to look into the matter. The sender refused to wait, claiming an urgent need for money and threatening to report Kok Sen to the authorities or post about the incident online if the compensation was not made immediately.

The reaction sparked Wong’s suspicion. “If they were so strapped of money, why would they go out for a meal and spend over $110?” he questioned.

There were other red flags. The sender had messaged from a Malaysian mobile number, enabled WhatsApp’s 24-hour disappearing messages feature and communicated strictly in English.

“The second red flag was that the cockroach was in such a conspicuous spot that it was impossible for the waiter not to have seen it when serving the meal,” Wong said of the photo that accompanied the complaint.

“Moreover, the person did not report it to us immediately at the time, but demanded compensation only afterwards.”

The scheme unravelled when Wong cross-checked Google Reviews and found an identical photo uploaded by someone just days before.

The photo featured the exact same spread, a can of soft drink and an identical arm. The only difference: an image of a cockroach had been digitally inserted into the bottom-left corner of the shot.

“They simply downloaded a photo from a recent review, used AI to alter it and sent it to us,” Wong said.

A closer look revealed the scammer had also lifted the receipt from Google Reviews, which was dated Oct 22, contradicting the scammer’s claims of dining there on Oct 30.

When Wong confronted the blackmailer and threatened to report the incident to the police, the scammer claimed to have already posted the digitally altered photos on Google Reviews.

The restaurant owner then reported the case to the police.

Wong disclosed that his restaurant is fitted with a total of 22 CCTV cameras, which would make it straightforward to dispute false allegations and verify on-site incidents.

Reflecting on the close shave, he admitted that he might not have spotted the deception in time had the scammer lifted a photo from an older review.

“I am sharing this story primarily to warn other restaurants and hawkers that similar scams have been emerging recently,” Wong said. “This was the first time I encountered something like this after having been in the F&B industry for so long, and I nearly fell for it.”

Lim Ruey Yan is with ST Now, the desk that covers breaking and trending news for The Straits Times.