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Online pimp sentenced to 24 months' jail, fined $83,000

Roderic Chen Hao Ran was sentenced in the State Courts on 26 May. (Yahoo Singapore photo: Safhras Khan)
Roderic Chen Hao Ran was sentenced in the State Courts on 26 May. (Yahoo Singapore photo: Safhras Khan)

A pimp who operated an online social escort business for over two years from 2015 was sentenced to 24 months’ jail and fined S$83,000 on Friday (26 May)

Roderic Chen Hao Ran, 32, pleaded guilty to nine charges under the Women’s Charter on 9 March this year. These include five counts of living in part on the earnings of prostitution and three counts of procuring women for prostitution.

Chen also pleaded guilty to a new provision under the Women’s Charter – the operation of a mobile phone line that offered the provision of sexual services by multiple women to other persons in return for payment.

Chen’s case is the first to be concluded under the new provision, which took effect on 1 July last year. The provision, which was read by Social and Family Development Minister Tan Chuan-Jin in February 2016, is meant to target vice syndicates operating online.

Another 17 charges similar charges and one charge under the Protection from Harassment Act were taken into consideration for sentencing.

Chen had first learned how to operate a social escort company from a fellow inmate while he was serving a prison stint. After he was released in 2011, Chen set up an employment agency but the business did not do well and incurred debts.

As a result, Chen started the online social escort service in 2015 to pay off his debts. Chen met a co-accused, Lee Soon Ann, 37, and they agreed to cooperate and share the social escorts under their charge as well as the commissions.

Chen and Lee started operating their business providing prostitutes via their websites for an hourly rate of between $450 and $650.

The two would place advertisements on the websites and girls who were interested would call and send in their personal particulars and photographs. The girls were informed beforehand that they might have to provide sexual services to clients.

The pair would take and share a cut of about 40 per cent from each woman per assignment. Their business involved 12 prostitutes in total.

The police, acting on a tip-off, eventually raided Chen’s house in Compassvale Walk on 27 July 2016 and he was arrested. Lee, who was arrested later, has not yet been dealt with in court.

Over the 30 months of operations, Chen earned about S$5,000 a month and some $150,000 in total.

The prosecution, represented by Deputy Public Prosecutor Gail Wong, sought 25 months’ jail and a fine of $83,000.

Referring to the new provision, DPP Wong said that Chen’s use of an online website and a phone line exploited the “expansive reach of this medium, which is able to reach many more customers over and above traditional pimping though physical communications”.

Electronic means also made the offenders hard to detect by law enforcers due to the anonymity of the Internet, she added.

In mitigation, Chen’s lawyer Choo Si Sen said that the girls involved were not forced into joining the business, and the period of offending was “not long”.

“[Chen] never took any advantage of any of the girls… the women were not underage and accused was not a member of a syndicate,” said Choo.

For both the charges of living on the earnings of prostitution and procuring a woman for prostitution, Chen could have been jailed up to five years and fined a maximum of S$10,000.

Under the new provision, Chen could have been jailed up to three years and/or fined up to S$3,000 on his first conviction.

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