Taiwanese man who took part in police impersonation scam jailed 30 months
He arrived in Singapore on Christmas Day last year for the sole purpose of participating in a scam that deceived people into giving up their bank account details.
Huang Hsiang-Wei, 25, acted as a lookout and runner for a syndicate whose members would call up their victims and deceive them into believing they were police officers from Singapore or China.
Victims would be told they were being investigating for money-laundering or other offences. They would then be asked for their banking details, such as their one-time passwords, in order to facilitate investigations.
In Huang’s case, three victims – all foreigners aged between 29 and 31 years old – were cheated of $74,000. Two of the victims were Chinese nationals, one a student and the other a technical support specialist, while the third was a facial therapist from Vietnam.
The money has since been recovered.
Huang was jailed 30 months on Thursday (27 December) after he pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in a conspiracy with an accomplice to facilitate the scam.
The accomplice, 22-year-old Taiwanese Hsu Lai-De, absconded from Singapore on the same day that the offences were carried out, before police investigations could be commenced against him.
‘Job opportunity’ in Singapore
Huang first came to know of a “job opportunity’ in Singapore through an online gaming acquaintance known as “gao fu shuai (“tall, rich and handsome” in English). When Huang inquired more about the work involved, the acquaintance brushed him off and told him not to ask so much.
As he needed money at the time, Huang accepted the proposal. The acquaintance paid for Huang’s flight and he also received $20,000 Taiwanese dollars (S$900) in his bank account.
Huang met Hsu for the first time on 25 December last year and the duo took a flight to Singapore. The former was instructed to collect cash from locations specified by “gao fu shuai“. For this work, Huang would be paid between $300 and $500 for each transaction.
On 8 January this year, Huang acted as a lookout while Hsu collected the money from unwitting money mules on three separate occasions. The money mules in these incidents believed that they were aiding the “authorities” in their investigations by allowing money to be sent to their bank accounts.
They would then withdraw the monies and hand them over to Hsu at specified locations.
Thwarted by police patrol
Hsu and Huang managed to collect $74,000 that day. They were instructed to hand the sum over to a person known as “jin cheng wu” (the Mandarin name for actor Takeshi Kaneshiro) at the garden bridge of People’s Park Complex.
However, while Huang was waiting at the bridge, he was approached by police officers on foot patrol.
As Huang appeared nervous, officers conducted a search on him and found an envelope containing $74,000. He was then arrested.
Huang later claimed that he had found the envelope near to where the police found him.
‘Pivotal conduit’ in scam operations
Deputy Public Prosecutor Alfie Lim sought 30 months’ jail for Huang, whom he described as the main person receiving instructions from the syndicate.
The syndicate, which was “fairly sophisticated” also undermined public trust and confidence in the authorities, added the DPP.
Huang’s lawyer, Leon Koh, asked for 10 months stressing that his client had come to Singapore for the job opportunity without knowing that he would be participating in something illegal.
The lawyer added that Huang had originally turned down a job offer from “gao fu shuai” to open and sell bank accounts as he was aware it was illegal. It was only on 8 January, when Huang accompanied Hsu to collect the money, that Huang had reason to believe that he was involved in something illegal.
Huang also had no contact with the victims, and came into contact with the money only when he was tasked to deliver it, added Koh.
In delivering the sentence, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said that Huang was a “pivotal conduit” in the operations. He noted that although Hsu and Huang’s roles were slightly different, both were “pivotal to the facilitation of the offence”.
For his offence, Huang could have been jailed up to 10 years, fined a maximum $500,000, or both.
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