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SINGAPORE: Six men will be charged in court for their suspected involvement in an unlicensed moneylending syndicate believed to be responsible for at least 25,500 ScamShield reports, said the police on Thursday (Aug 13).<\/p>\n
They are among eight men and three women, aged between 18 and 77, who were arrested during an islandwide enforcement operation for allegedly assisting in the business of the syndicate.<\/p>\n
The operation, involving simultaneous raids at multiple locations on Wednesday, targeted those believed to be involved in the syndicate, as well as errant mobile phone retailers suspected of fraudulently registering postpaid SIM cards that were subsequently used by the syndicate for their activities.<\/p>\n
Preliminary investigations showed that the 11 people had assisted the syndicate in various ways, including sending bulk SMS advertisements offering “fast cash” and “easy loans” using Singapore-registered mobile lines and topping up these mobile numbers to facilitate the messaging activities.<\/p>\n
They also acted as runners and provided their bank accounts to facilitate unlicensed moneylending transactions, said the police.<\/p>\n
The syndicate is believed to be responsible for at least 25,500 ScamShield reports and at least 1,509 police reports, of which 883 were related to unlicensed moneylending.<\/p>\n
During the police operation, officers seized more than S$410,000 (US$320,000) in cash, two laptops, 22 mobile phones, 14 SIM cards and 24 bank cards as case exhibits.<\/p>\n
In addition, 29 bank accounts linked to the syndicate, with a combined balance of more than S$106,000, were frozen, while cryptocurrencies valued at over US$25,000 were also seized.<\/p>\n
The six men, aged between 26 and 29, will be charged in court with an offence under Section 19 of the Moneylenders Act 2008.<\/p>\n
One of them was also found to have more than 300 vaporisers and related components, with most of the items suspected to contain etomidate. The vaporisers have been sent for testing, and the man is assisting the Health Sciences Authority with investigations under the Tobacco and Vaporisers Control Act 1993.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: Six men will be charged in court for their suspected involvement in an unlicensed moneylending syndicate believed to be responsible for at least 25,500…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--ArKGWnuA--\/c_crop,h_514,w_914,x_0,y_0\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/08\/13\/screenshot_2026-08-13_131053.png?itok=lj_DX0sL","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[141,2619,400,28174,7356],"class_list":["post-76226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-charged","tag-connection","tag-men","tag-moneylending","tag-syndicate","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}