10 suspected money mules, including one teenager, to be charged on Thursday
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The suspects allegedly sold or rented their bank accounts to criminal syndicates for as much as $600 per bank account.
PHOTO: SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
SINGAPORE - Ten people will be charged on Thursday for their involvement in money mule activities including selling or renting their bank accounts to scam syndicates.
The suspects - aged between 17 and 60 - allegedly sold or rented their bank accounts to criminal syndicates for as much as $600 per bank account, said the police on Wednesday.
Some of them allegedly cheated banks into opening bank accounts, and then handing over the ATM cards and online banking details to the criminal syndicates.
Four of the suspects also allegedly sold their SingPass credentials to criminal syndicates to create new bank accounts.
These 10 people were suspected to be to be involved various scams, including those where crooks impersonate government officials, Chinese officials and bank officers. Police also suspect that they were involved in job scams, malware phishing scams and internet love scams.
They will be charged in court on Thursday for various offences connected to money mule activities which include cheating, facilitating unauthorised access to computer material and unauthorised disclosure of access code.
The offence of cheating carries a jail term of up to three years, a fine, or both. The offence of unauthorised disclosure of an access code carries a jail term of up to three years, a fine or both, for first-time offenders.
If found guilty of facilitating unauthorised access to computer material, a person could be fined, jailed for up to two years, or both, for first-time offenders.
“The police take a serious view of persons who may be involved in scams and frauds, and perpetrators will be dealt with in accordance with the law,” said the police.
According to the police’s mid-year scam statistics for 2023, there were 22,339 scam cases reported from January to June,
The total amount that victims lost in the first half of 2023 amounted to $334.5 million, slightly lower than the $342.1 million in the same period in 2022.
For more information on scams, visit scamalert.sg www.police.gov.sg/iwitness
