Jail for man who was part of Grab driver group linked to 5,540 fraudulent transactions
Shaffiq Alkhatib
The Straits Times
March 27, 2026
A man has been sentenced to seven months’ jail after he duped transport company GrabTaxi Holdings into making payments for delivery jobs he had not done.
Dzulqarnain Muhamad, 35, was among a group of Grab drivers who cheated the company.
Their actions caused the company to incur over $58,000 in losses, the police said in November 2025.
In total, 5,540 fraudulent transactions were made, and Dzulqarnain’s offences involved more than $13,500.
On March 27, he was given the jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to two counts of cheating involving over $11,700 in total.
A third cheating charge relating to the remaining amount was considered during his sentencing. He has made no restitution.
He was one of four men charged on Nov 28, 2025.
The cases involving the three others – Alex Wang Xiang Yi, 30; Lee Yong Ze, 31; and Loh Jing Jie, 33 – are pending.
According to court documents, five Grab drivers were involved in the ruse, but the fifth person, who was not named, was not charged on Nov 28, 2025.
The drivers took advantage of a loophole in Grab’s courier service known as “GrabExpress”.
Grab drivers are paid a commission fee for every successful delivery.
Should they fail to make the delivery, they must return the item to the sender and indicate on the Grab mobile application that the parcel was returned.
Grab will then cancel the delivery job and pay the driver for each attempted delivery.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jheong Siew Yin said the drivers behind the fraudulent transactions would accept GrabExpress bookings and immediately indicate on the application that the parcel was returned.
In reality, they had made no attempt to collect the items.
Court documents did not state if the affected senders alerted Grab when no one came to collect the items for delivery.
The DPP said each of the five drivers also operated multiple Grab driver accounts under the names of other people but used their own profile photos.
“These drivers also exploited the fact that Grab did not conduct cross-checks of the profile photos of Grab drivers,” DPP Jheong said.
The prosecutor told the court that Dzulqarnain had learnt from Wang about the “loophole”.
As part of the ruse, another Grab driver would log into his own account from Dzulqarnain’s phone.
Next, Dzulqarnain would change the profile picture of this other driver to his own.
Dzulqarnain could then use a facial recognition function to access the other driver’s account.
He later committed cheating by using accounts belonging to two other drivers.
In June and July 2025, Dzulqarnain repeatedly exploited the loophole and cheated Grab on more than 930 occasions.
Grab made payments to the two drivers’ Grab wallets, and Dzulqarnain then transferred the money to his own bank account.
He also gave these two drivers undisclosed sums of money.
During internal checks, Grab detected 5,540 fraudulent transactions from 24 Grab driver accounts operated by five drivers.
Dzulqarnain was arrested on Aug 8, 2025.
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