A Malaysian teenage boy was recently arrested in Singapore for allegedly committing money laundering offences involving permanent residency (PR) applications.
He is expected to be charged in court today for assisting another to retain benefits from criminal conduct, reported Mothership.
Police alerted of PR scams
On Apr 9 and 11, Singaporean police received two reports of scams involving PR applications.
In these cases, the victims were allegedly instructed to hand over S$7,500 and S$2,200 (approx. RM23,200 and RM6,800) to an unknown person.
It wasn’t until when the victims inquired about the status of their applications with Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) did they realised that they had been decieved.
Arrested
Following a follow-up investigations by officers from the Bedok Police Division, the teenager was identified by police, leading to his arrest on Apr 21.
Preliminary investigations found that he was tasked by unknown individuals to collect and hand over the cash from the victims.
Police also suspect that the teen’s involved in other similar cases.
If found guilty, the 15-year-old faces up to 10 years in jail, a fine not exceeding S$500,000 (approx. RM1.5 million) or both.
Under Singaporean laws, scammers and members or recruiters of scam syndicates are subjected to mandatory caning of at least six strokes, which can go up to 24 strokes.
As for scam mules who abet scammers by laundering scam proceeds, they are liable to discretionary caning of up to 12 strokes.
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