SINGAPORE – A member of an organised criminal group recorded at least 20 videos teaching viewers how to scam Singaporeans by using malware.
The court heard on Dec 9 that this was the first prosecution of an offender who had taught others how to use malware, or malicious software.
Between June 2023 and June 2024, Malaysian Cheoh Hai Beng, 49, and several other offenders were linked to a scheme in which Android mobile phones belonging to at least 129 victims were remotely accessed after they were installed with versions of a type of malware called Spymax.
Other individuals could “take over” the mobile phones, and unauthorised outgoing transactions totalling nearly $3.2 million were then made from the victims’ bank accounts.
Cheoh, who recorded the videos in the Dominican Republic and Malaysia between February and May 2023, was sentenced to five years and six months’ jail on Dec 9, 2025.
He had pleaded guilty to one count of misusing a computer system and an offence involving organised crime.
He was also fined $3,608 and will have to spend an additional three weeks behind bars if he fails to pay the amount.
Cheoh’s alleged accomplice, Taiwanese Lee Rong Teng, is still at large.
Deputy public prosecutors Hon Yi, Yee Jia Rong and Ashley Chin stated in court documents that the two men became friends in South Korea in 2008 while they were in jail there for undisclosed offences.
Lee later invited Cheoh to visit him and his wife in the Dominican Republic.
Cheoh then travelled from Malaysia to the Caribbean country on March 20, 2022, and stayed at Lee’s home.
In January 2023, Lee told Cheoh that a friend had introduced him to software which allowed its users to “spy on people’s phones”.
