Singapore man jailed after Pokémon Trading Card Game card scam worth $115k SGD

On July 4th, Aizil A Rahim, 28, was sentenced to 18 months in jail after repeatedly cheating customers on the Singaporean e-commerce platform Carousell and reporting false information to law enforcement officers in an effort not to be caught. Aizil pled guilty to nine counts of criminal breach of trust and one count of giving false information to a public servant, among sixteen more charges brought against him. The convicted will begin serving his sentence on July 11th.

According to Singapore newspapers, Aizil began selling expensive Pokémon Trading Card Game cards and cards from the One Piece card game on the Carousell platform in mid-2022. While he was originally fulfilling orders for cards, the “first wave of preorders,” the prosecution asserted in court, began in February 2023. At this point, Aizil stopped filling orders, simply pocketing the money. He also went on an unpaid leave of absence from his job around this time.

Aizil had many return customers involved in this first wave of preorders, he admitted in court, due to the trust he had built during the period where he was actually fulfilling orders. Public prosecutors told the court that instead of using money from his customers to obtain their ordered cards, Aizil instead “misappropriated the monies by spending them on his watch purchases, expensive trading cards, food, shopping, [and] a staycation.” He reportedly spent $40,000 SGD on his “addiction” to collecting watches and football cards during this period.

From July to October of 2023 was the “second wave” of preorder scams, during which time Aizil listed cases of Scarlet & Violet—151 cards for between $1,700 and $1,850 SGD. He gave excuses to upset customers from the first wave for the undelivered cards, saying he had had an accident, and then eventually blaming a nonexistent Japanese supplier for the delays. Aizel stated he thought he could use money from the second wave to appease customers from the first with refunds or fulfillments, but later admitted he never had any intention of delivering cards.

Beginning on July 28th, 2023, Aizil gave several statements to Singapore police indicating that he had been scammed by his Japanese card supplier “Nagashima,” who did not really exist. He reported that he had paid his supplier $30,000, who then became unreachable. He provided screenshots of conversations with Nagashima and the police report to his scammed customers in an attempt to assure them that he was not the scammer.

Twenty-five individuals reported Aizil to police over the summer of 2023 and he admitted he lied in his statements to police on July 5th, 2023. He has since paid $9,287.37 SGD in restitution to the victims out of the $115,000 he made during his scam.