S'pore traveller lost US$300 to scam booking website: 'This is why I have trust issues'

A Singaporean fell victim to a scam booking site after paying over US$300 for train tickets for their upcoming holiday to Korea.

The Stomper shared with Stomp that they were planning a trip to Korea in April with their mum and wanted to book train tickets from Seoul to Busan.

"I'm an avid reader of Stomp and I really wanted to warn other travellers about my scam experience when buying KTX tickets," the Stomper said.

"I made a mistake by buying my train tickets early and was scammed by an online website."

In a TikTok video made by the Stomper, they said: "This is why I have trust issues."

They did a Google search for 'KTX tickets' and several links showed up but made a mistake 'by thinking KTXtrains.com is the official website'.

"I thought KTXtrains.com was legit but I was wrong and they redirected me to their scammer website Rail Ninja," they said.

"The moment I received a fake receipt and no tickets, alarm bells start(ed) ringing.

"I later found out that Rail Ninja bought different domain names to dupe unsuspecting customers and when you made a booking through other pages, it would be redirected to the Rail Ninja payment page,

"That's why they successfully managed to scam so many victims."

They then did a quick search on Rail Ninja and discovered several other people had been duped by the alleged scam site.

They were also shocked to find that the company was based in Malta.

The Stomper said they have since called their bank because Rail Ninja had their credit card details.

"I learnt my lesson the hard way and the only legit website is www.letskorail.com," they said.

"I'm angry and pissed with myself and disappointed that despite being so cautious, I'm still a victim of this.

"After seeing so many cases online, I feel a need to share this more vocally.

"I don't know how to bring this syndicate down, but I want others to be careful of them too.

"Apparently this started as a scam happening across Europe and now the scammers have started branching out to Asia, especially Korea and Japan.

"There are also some victims who got cheated when they were trying to buy their Japan Shinkansen tickets.

"Please consider doing this PSA (public service announcement) and warn all travellers and our fellow Singaporeans."

Click through the gallery above for more screenshots.