Scammers in Singapore face mandatory caning of up to 24 strokes for serious cases with effect from yesterday as a law authorizing the punishment came into effect.
The city-state has doubled down on syndicates following record-high scam losses, with the Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs saying that “fighting scams is a top national priority.”
Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy lost more than US$2.8 billion through scams from 2020 to the first half of this year, Singaporean Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs Sim Ann (沈穎) told parliament last month as she pushed for the bill to pass.
Photo: AFP
About 190,000 cases of scamming had been reported over that time period, she said.
Caning scammers was part of amendments to the penal code passed in parliament in November, and would be imposed on top of other punishments like imprisonment and fines.
Scammers and members of scam syndicates or recruiters “will face mandatory caning of at least six strokes, up to a maximum of 24 strokes,” the ministry said in a statement.
Those helping scammers, including so-called “money mules” who offer bank accounts or SIM cards, face “discretionary caning” of up to 12 lashes, it added.
In the past few years, Singaporean authorities have intensified public education efforts against scamming, including setting up a national hotline.
In 2020, the government introduced the ScamShield app, which allows users to check suspicious calls, Web sites and messages.
Last year, then-Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) told local media that he had been scammed as an item he ordered online never arrived, highlighting how the issue affected all levels of society.
Cyberscam hubs, which lure foreigners into working to swindle people with online romance and crypto investment cons, have proliferated across Southeast Asia in the past few years.
Singaporean police have said they had seized more than US$115 million in assets tied to Chen Zhi (陳志), a British-Cambodian tycoon accused of running forced labor camps in Cambodia used as multibillion dollar scam centers.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS