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SINGAPORE: A man who deceived a Singaporean woman he met on Tinder into going overseas and later engaging in sex work in Dubai was sentenced to jail and caning on Wednesday (Oct 7).<\/p>\n
The woman was revolted by the idea of sex work but agreed as she thought it was the only way to marry him. She stopped only after contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and later returned to Singapore.<\/p>\n
Achraf Arjaouy, 32, an Italian national, was sentenced to eight years’ jail, six strokes of the cane and a fine of S$9,000 (US$7,035).<\/p>\n
The prosecution did not seek compensation for the victim as Arjaouy has no means to pay.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of one count of recruiting a person by means of deception for the purpose of sexual exploitation under the Prevention of Human Trafficking Act, which he contested.<\/p>\n
The victim cannot be named due to a gag order protecting her identity.<\/p>\n
She was aged 30 to 31 in early 2021 when she met Arjaouy on Tinder. He posed as a wealthy pilot from Qatar.<\/p>\n
They later travelled to Dubai in April 2021, where Arjaouy told the woman during a “whirlwind courtship” that he wanted to marry her in Qatar, the prosecution said.<\/p>\n
However, in Dubai, Arjaouy asked the woman to raise US$10,000 as proof of funds before she could enter Qatar.<\/p>\n
To do so, he got her to provide sexual services, collecting her earnings daily.<\/p>\n
The woman did so for several months before contracting an STD in mid-September 2021.<\/p>\n
She then stopped engaging in sex work and returned to Singapore a few months later.<\/p>\n
Her mother had sought Singapore police assistance in April 2021, when the woman first went to Dubai. Arjaouy was arrested in Singapore in November 2023 for an unrelated offence.<\/p>\n
In convicting Arjaouy, District Judge Eugene Teo had rejected two points at the heart of his defence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, he denied trafficking the woman and said her evidence was “incredible” because a real victim would have behaved differently.<\/p>\n
Arjaouy had also claimed that the woman’s evidence was incredible “given her physical appearance”, as it was simply not believable she could have successfully been a sex worker.<\/p>\n
In rejecting this argument about physical appearance, the judge said one does not have to be particularly tall, fair or have a full head of hair to get by on one’s looks.<\/p>\n
Arjaouy is bald.<\/p>\n
He was represented at trial by Mr Joel Quek and Samuel Teo from WongPartnership.<\/p>\n
However, they applied to discharge themselves from acting for him in other charges Arjaouy faces, saying they had obtained the approval from the office of the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme.<\/p>\n
Arjaouy’s pending charges are largely for cheating.<\/p>\n
For recruiting a person by deception for sexual exploitation, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years, fined up to S$100,000 and given up to six strokes of the cane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: A man who deceived a Singaporean woman he met on Tinder into going overseas and later engaging in sex work in Dubai was sentenced…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--Bg_BLorZ--\/c_crop,h_900,w_1600,x_0,y_143\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2024\/03\/12\/jem_0152.jpg?itok=zLClqFoS","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2069,8075,2618,780,140,2395,1293,644,31238,234,1451],"class_list":["post-91002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-caning","tag-dubai","tag-human","tag-jail","tag-man","tag-sex","tag-singaporean","tag-trafficking","tag-tricking","tag-woman","tag-work","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91002","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=91002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}