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SINGAPORE: Three foreign men who planned burglaries in Singapore targeting private estates and made away with valuables worth S$644,700 (US$505,000) were jailed on Thursday (Oct 22).<\/p>\n
Hernando Giraldo Franco, a 62-year-old Spanish-Colombian man, was sentenced to six years and eight months’ jail.<\/p>\n
Garcia Iglesias Hector Daniel, a 53-year-old Mexican man, and 49-year-old Mexican-Colombian national Garces Murillo Mateo Andres each received seven years and four months’ jail.<\/p>\n
All three pleaded guilty to several charges, including theft, housebreaking and concealment of criminal benefits.<\/p>\n
The three men were friends who arrived in Singapore for the first time in April or May 2025, the court heard.<\/p>\n
While in Singapore, they devised a plan to burglarise landed homes by searching for private residential estates.<\/p>\n
Hernando used a car he had rented for sightseeing to take his accomplices to a hardware store, where they bought a screwdriver and electric grinder for the break-ins.<\/p>\n
Garcia and Garces bought caps, gloves, masks and black jackets to conceal their identities.<\/p>\n
When night fell, Hernando drove Garcia and Garces around private estates to look for houses with no lights or signs of human activity.<\/p>\n
Hernando was to be the lookout and getaway driver while the other two men carried out the break-ins.<\/p>\n
Shortly before 9.30pm on May 9, 2025, the trio went to Dunearn Close and picked a house with no lights on.<\/p>\n
While Hernando waited outside in the parked car, Garcia and Garces climbed over a wall into the compound and entered the house through a window.<\/p>\n
They ransacked the master bedroom and filled a bag with stolen items, but found nothing worth stealing in two other rooms.<\/p>\n
Garcia and Garces then left the house and returned to Hernando’s car before heading to a hotel.<\/p>\n
In total, they stole items worth about S$644,700, including gold coins, jewellery, diamond rings and earrings, luxury watches and cash,<\/span> from the Dunearn Close house.<\/p>\n The following night on May 10, 2025, they went to Eng Neo Avenue and picked a target.<\/p>\n However, Garcia and Graces fled before they could enter the house as they heard noises from within the compound.<\/p>\n They later returned and entered the house through an open sliding door on the ground floor.<\/span><\/p>\n The two men went to a dressing room on the second floor where they attempted to break open a safe with a screwdriver but failed.<\/p>\n They did not manage to find anything valuable to steal.<\/p>\n Around 10pm, an elderly man in the house noticed Garces standing near a staircase on the second floor and shouted at him.<\/p>\n Garces banged on the door of the dressing room to alert Garcia before making a run for it.<\/p>\n Garcia rushed out of the room and tried to flee, but the elderly man poured water from a kettle he was holding onto the floor to stop Garcia.<\/p>\n Garcia slipped and fell but managed to escape through the same sliding door.<\/p>\n Hernando picked the two men up and they went back to the hotel after throwing the screwdriver and clothing used in the burglary into a forested area.<\/p>\n The trio was arrested near their hotel on May 11, 2025, and cash and two handbags that had been stolen from the Dunearn Close house were recovered.<\/p>\n All the stolen items were recovered and the men were remanded.<\/p>\n Deputy Public Prosecutor Leong Kit Yu sought between nine and 11 years’ jail for Hernando and Garces. He asked for between 10 and 12 years’ jail for Garcia.<\/p>\n He pointed to the value of the items stolen, the damage caused to the safes and the planning and premeditation involved in the burglaries.<\/p>\n Hernando was represented by Mr Azri Imran Tan from Pro Bono SG, who sought a jail term of not more than six-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n Ms Tan Jun Yin and Mr Thangavelu sought five years and four months for Garces, while Ms Seraphine Loh asked for five years and nine months for Garcia.<\/p>\n In sentencing, District Judge Ong Luan Tze said this was quite an egregious case of housebreaking committed against residential properties at night.<\/p>\n There was extensive ransacking and damage as a result, she said.<\/p>\n Judge Ong said the fact that most of the property stolen was eventually recovered cannot really be credited to the trio.<\/p>\n She added that there was no reason to distinguish Hernando’s culpability just because he was not the one who actually broke into the house.<\/p>\n As a lookout and getaway driver, he played an equally important role in the whole plan, said the judge.<\/p>\n For housebreaking to commit theft, they could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE: Three foreign men who planned burglaries in Singapore targeting private estates and made away with valuables worth S$644,700 (US$505,000) were jailed on Thursday (Oct…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94903,"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-94902","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\/94902","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=94902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/94903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}SENTENCING<\/h2>\n
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