He ran a Thai food stall in the west side of Singapore and thought it was his lucky day when he received two orders last Wednesday within minutes of each other amounting to $160.

The man, who wanted to be known only as Mr Zhou, told The New Paper: "Both customers opted for cash on delivery as they said they had network problems and couldn't do online transfers."

The eatery, which Mr Zhou also owns, accepts only online payment, but he decided to make an exception that day as he knew StarHub users were experiencing network problems.

The 40-year-old hawker realised it was a scam 30 minutes later.

In a news release yesterday, the police said they have observed an increasing trend of unlicensed moneylenders making use of food delivery services to harass debtors and members of the public.

The police said: "The unlicensed moneylenders would order large quantities of food or make multiple orders on the same day, and arrange for the food to be delivered to the debtor's home, often late at night."

In some cases, the delivery would be sent to the debtor's relatives.

With the Covid-19 circuit breaker in operation, only takeaways and delivery orders are allowed from restaurants, cafes and hawker stalls. More and more hawkers are now using online delivery platforms to get food to customers and the latest scam threatens to hurt them.

When the man delivering the food from Mr Zhou's stall arrived at the address, the owner of the unit said there was no order placed.

Mr Zhou ended up giving the food to some friends and his workers for free.

In another incident, hawker Ivan Tan, 26, received an order last Saturday for 16 bowls of noodles which cost about $70.

"With business scarce these days, when we received an order for that amount, we all jumped in happiness and started rushing to prepare it," he recalled.

Mr Tan, who owns a noodle stall in Ang Mo Kio, delivered the order himself.

When he arrived at the address, he saw a note outside warning delivery people not to knock as there were no orders placed.

Mr Tan said: " I found out that the residents of the unit had been victims of harassment."

The owner of the unit called the police and the entire episode lasted three hours.

Said Mr Tan: "By then, the noodles had become cold and soggy... so we had to dispose of all the food."