With his family of five cooped up at home, John (not his real name) decided to splurge last month on a Nintendo Switch game console from a seller on Carousell.

However, the 40-year-old, who works in sales, not only ended up $490 poorer but also had nothing to show for it.

John was one of hundreds of people to have fallen prey to e-commerce scams, which have spiked in the Covid-19 outbreak as more people carry out online transactions from home, said the police.

These more than doubled in the first quarter of the year, with 1,159 cases compared with 536 cases in the same period last year.

The amount lost also rose, from $469,000 in the first quarter of last year to more than $1.3 million in the same period this year.

Last year, scams made up 27 per cent of all crimes - a rise from the 18.7 per cent in the previous year.

The Nintendo Switch console, which has a recommended retail price of $699 in Singapore, was one of the prime products involved in the scams.

Last month, two men - aged 19 and 20 - were arrested for allegedly cheating more than 80 victims out of $30,000 by pretending to sell the gaming consoles on online marketplace Carousell.

John, who was one of the victims, said he wanted to buy the console as the circuit breaker period had just started and he was looking for a family activity he could share with his three children.

"We looked at different sellers online and found one that was a pretty good deal. The seller sounded very professional and we thought it was a trustworthy source," he said.

John agreed to make the full payment by bank transfer.

"He said that because we cannot do self-collection during the circuit breaker, it has to be delivered, so we had to make the full payment first," he said.

John was sent a POSB Savings account number to transfer the money to, after which the seller went quiet.

"Before the transfer, the seller's replies were prompt, but once we messaged him to say that the transfer was done, suddenly the conversation stopped, and that's when we suspected something was amiss," he added.

The following day, John filed a police report. He said he is not hopeful about getting his money back.

"We have since got a Nintendo Switch from an official retailer online. We were much more careful in this transaction. It was painful, but lesson learnt," he said.

Other scams in which the products were never delivered involved face masks and laptops.

Scammers have also been quick to prey on people's fears about the pandemic.

In a twist on a familiar scam, they have impersonated staff from the Ministry of Health in phone calls to victims, claiming that officials from China have seized parcels under the victims' names that contained contraband medicine to treat the coronavirus.

These calls are then transferred to another person claiming to be from the Chinese police investigating the case. Using this method, scammers have cheated victims of more than $110,000, the police said last month.