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SINGAPORE: New legislation will be tabled in parliament to reinforce the deterrence approach when sentencing all scammers and those who facilitate scams “including those who are young”, said Senior Minister K Shanmugam on Tuesday (Oct 6).<\/p>\n
This comes after a High Court ruling in September that allowed appeals by youth offenders and sentenced them to probation and community sentences instead of a deterrent one, putting weight on rehabilitation as the primary sentencing consideration.<\/p>\n
This rationale by the courts “contradicts the approach set out in sentencing guidelines” that recommend jail or reformative training, said Mr Shanmugam.<\/p>\n
He was responding to a parliamentary question by Mr Christopher de Souza (PAP-Holland-Bukit Timah) on whether the government will consider additional legislative provisions for youth offenders involved in scams.<\/p>\n
“We wanted this message to go out that every offender, young or old, will be very seriously dealt with. If a number of cases are dealt with in this way, <\/strong><\/em>seriously, many other would-be offenders would take reference,” said Mr Shanmugam, who is also the Coordinating Minister for National Security and the Minister for Home Affairs.<\/p>\n “Word will get around, and people, including young people, will be much more careful. That will make it harder for scammers to operate, and help reduce the number of victims and the losses they suffer.”<\/p>\n On Sept 10, a three-judge coram comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justice Ang Cheng Hock and Justice Hoo Sheau Peng, dealt with an appeal case involving Mohamed Erzan Taib Zohri and six separate cases that also involve scams. The seven cases involved money mule offenders, six of whom were under the age of 21.<\/p>\n The court allowed the appeals for four cases and meted out probation and community-based sentences to them, and dismissed the remaining three.<\/p>\n Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Shanmugam said the sentencing guidelines had laid out that fines, probation, and community sentences are generally not appropriate, and that imprisonment or reformative training should be considered “given the need for deterrence and the public interest in suppressing scams”.<\/p>\n He noted that while it was understandable for the court to be inclined to impose rehabilitative sentences to youth offenders, the government has to consider the wider consequences of such crimes, including the huge amount of financial losses and “the full human costs of such scams”.<\/p>\n “Think of senior citizens losing their entire life savings and not knowing how they can eke out a living for the rest of their lives,” said Mr Shanmugam, noting that in 2025 for example, there were more than 5,000 elderly scam victims, with losses from these cases amounting to about S$200 million.<\/p>\n “Who is responsible? The scammers. Who helped them? The person who gave off his or her bank account, including young persons who do it to earn a few hundred dollars.”<\/p>\n Leniency towards scammers and those who facilitate scams will lead to many Singaporeans becoming victims.<\/p>\n “And if young offenders are being treated more leniently simply because of their age, scam syndicates will have every incentive to recruit more young people as mules. We cannot allow this to happen,” said Mr Shanmugam.<\/p>\n To this end, the senior minister said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will be tabling new legislation in parliament “soon” to give effect to its policy position.<\/p>\n The legislation will be “quite express” and make clear that the court’s position in the Erzan case is not to be followed, he said.<\/p>\n “This is not the time to go soft,” said Mr Shanmugam.<\/p>\n Mr Shanmugam noted that scams today are the most prevalent crime type in Singapore, with the police receiving an average of 90 reports on such cases every day involving about S$2 million of losses daily.<\/p>\n “My ministry is particularly concerned that many young people are getting involved in scam-related offences. In 2025, more than 1,000 youths were investigated in connection with scam reports,” he said.<\/p>\n In September, the Ministry of Social and Family Development reported that the youth offending rate rose in Singapore in 2025, driven mainly by an increase in cheating and related offences<\/a>.<\/p>\n Such offences jumped 37 per cent from 814 in 2024 to 1,114 in 2025, the highest since 2021, with youths in this category largely involved in scams as mules.<\/p>\n In such cases, they were found to have relinquished their bank account and Singpass credentials, registered and handed over SIM cards or mobile phone lines, and facilitated transactions for scammers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE: New legislation will be tabled in parliament to reinforce the deterrence approach when sentencing all scammers and those who facilitate scams “including those who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90679,"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-90678","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\/90678","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=90678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}YOUTH INVOLVEMENT IN SCAMS “PARTICULARLY” CONCERNING<\/h2>\n
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