A 53-year-old Taiwanese national was sentenced to six-and-a-half years' of imprisonment on Monday for his role in a scam by impersonating as a police officer. He was charged under the Drug trafficking, corruption and other criminal offences.
Reports stated that the convict cheated Singaporeans while being a part of a transnational scam syndicate. Through this scam he collected almost S$1 million but handed over the money to other members of the same syndicate.
During the hearing, the judge came to know that in June 2017, the convict, Huang Ying-Chun was asked to join the scamming group by a person known as "Ah Fei." His job was to collect and provide all the details to the syndicate. In return, he was promised to be paid S$2,700.
The court heard that the Huang along with his compatriot and co-accused Chen Peng-Yu arrived at Singapore on June 21, 2017. The court documents stated that even though he knew that his job was illegal, he did not stop doing that. He collected money from seven Singapore nationals almost 13 times. All those victims were aged between 50 and 82.
The usual process of this scam involved an unknown caller cheating victims, who would provide their DBS or POSB login credentials and the money would be transferred to the accounts of some Singaporeans. Those receivers were instructed by a person, who claimed to be a police officer to withdraw that money and then hand it over to Huang. The accused then was responsible to deliver the money to Chen.
Later, a 55-year-old woman lodged a police complaint after losing almost S$225,000 because of the scam and that complaint helped the police officers to arrest Huang. During the investigation, the police came to know from that woman that, she received a call from an unknown person, who claimed that she had invested somewhere, which is a money laundering offence. Then the phone line was transferred to another man, who claimed to be a police officer from another country.
Later, she was given a link that looked like Singapore Police Force website and was also asked to submit her bank account details such as internet banking credentials on the provided website. When the unnamed woman realized that someone else accessed to her bank account illegally and made a transfer of about S$225,000 to a different account, she immediately filed the police report.
While the other Taiwanese man Chen is expected to attend his trial in August, Hung could have faced a jail sentence up to 10 years, a fine up to S$500,000 or both for committing all the criminal offences.
