SINGAPORE: Two Singaporean men who were part of a trio that laundered money for a Malaysian syndicate were sentenced to jail on Sept 30.<\/p>\n
Low Zhi Wei, 36, and Dillon Jang Wei Hong, 28, were sentenced to 72 months and 79 months\u2019 jail respectively.<\/p>\n
Jang was also fined S$15,000 (US$11,728).<\/p>\n
Both men pleaded guilty to three charges each, including charges for retaining the benefits of criminal conduct and being in a member of an organised criminal group.<\/p>\n
The third man, Shuek Jin Hui, 37, still has a case before the courts.<\/p>\n
Court documents stated that Low and Shuek were childhood friends. Shuek got to know Jang in 2022 through cryptocurrency trading.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Jang asked Shuek if he had any avenues to make money. Shuek allegedly said that he needed to convert money received in his bank account into cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
In return, he offered Jang a monthly commission of S$1,000.<\/p>\n
Jang would help Shuek convert the money that he received in his bank account into cryptocurrency. This would then be transferred to a cryptocurrency wallet provided by Shuek.<\/p>\n
As a result of this arrangement, Jang was investigated in October 2023 after scam proceeds were received in one of his bank accounts.<\/p>\n
Before giving his statement to the police, Shuek instructed Jang to blame an unknown person who allegedly deposited the money into his bank account.<\/p>\n
Jang lied to the police that he did not know the source of the money, and that he was a bona fide cryptocurrency trader, even though he suspected that scam proceeds were flowing through his bank accounts.<\/p>\n
Following the investigation, Jang told Shuek that he no longer wanted to use his personal bank accounts to trade cryptocurrency for unknown persons.<\/p>\n
Shuek allegedly proposed that they continue with the arangement, but with Jang using local bank accounts relinquished by others.<\/p>\n
Shuek purportedly got his runners to deliver mobile phones and SIM cards to Jang, who met other people to gain access to their bank and cryptocurrency accounts using these phones.<\/p>\n
The accounts were later used by foreign syndicates to launder money from criminal activities.<\/p>\n
Between January and February 2024, Jang, Shuek and two others travelled to Johor Bahru to meet a person who worked for a Malaysian criminal syndicate.<\/p>\n
Under Shuek\u2019s directions, they planned to market their services which involved laundering money using bank and cryptocurrency accounts.<\/p>\n
Jang demonstrated how money could be transferred from his bank account and converted into cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
Thereafter, Shuek and Jang agreed to work with the Malaysian syndicate.<\/p>\n
In July 2024, Low joined them as he needed to clear his debts.<\/p>\n
The three men worked together to provide money laundering services to unknown persons from Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Low and Shuek would find people who were willing to relinquish their local bank and cryptocurrency accounts, and then refer them to Jang, who opened and linked the accounts.<\/p>\n
Low found these money mules on Telegram, and offered to pay them for giving up their accounts. He was promised S$100 for every referral.<\/p>\n
Jang would meet the money mules, who would open bank and crytocurrency accounts using their Singpass, and carry out facial verification authentication on mobile phones provided by the Malaysian syndicate.<\/p>\n
There were at least 20 of such phones in circulation, according to the court documents.<\/p>\n
Once the money mule\u2019s bank or cryptocurrency account was frozen, the phone would be sent back to the syndicate for a factory reset.<\/p>\n
Jang mostly took instructions from Shuek, who was purportedly in contact with the Malaysian syndicate.<\/p>\n
Jang received a total of S$15,000 from Shuek in commissions, which were delivered by a runner.<\/p>\n
From July to Nov 1, 2024, several scam victims lodged police reports, claiming they had been asked to transfer money to bank accounts that were traced to the trio.<\/p>\n
Jang was arrested on Aug 22 that year at home, where police seized over 40 mobile phones, a cash counting machine and more than 60 SIM cards.<\/p>\n
Low and Shuek were arrested on the same day at Woodlands Checkpoint, where they were trying to flee Singapore.<\/p>\n
More than S$29,000 in cash was seized from the pair.<\/p>\n
At the time of their arrest, the trio controlled at least 40 Singapore bank accounts. Police reports from scam victims were linked to 28 of these accounts.<\/p>\n
Transfers from these scam victims amounted to more than S$1.2 million.<\/p>\n
Deputy Public Prosecutors Zhou Yang and Kenneth Ng sought a sentence of 93 to 101.5 months\u2019 jail for Jang, and 83 months and two weeks to 95 months and one week\u2019s jail for Low.<\/p>\n
Low\u2019s lawyer, Gavin Neo from WongPartnership argued that Low was the least culpable of the three.<\/p>\n
Neo said that Low was the most junior member of the group, and played a limited role unlike Jang and Shuek.<\/p>\n
The lawyer also argued that the monetary gain Low received paled in comparison to what Jang received.<\/p>\n
Jang\u2019s lawyer, Low Hui Hui from Crossborders, said his client continued laundering money as he was persuaded by the ringleader, Shuek.<\/p>\n
He also said Jang had no contact with the syndicate, as he only received instructions from Shuek and Low. – The Straits Times\/ANN<\/p>\n
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SINGAPORE: Two Singaporean men who were part of a trio that laundered money for a Malaysian syndicate were sentenced to jail on Sept 30. Low…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89565","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=89565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/89566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}