9 men who allegedly gave their bank accounts to criminal syndicates charged with money mule offences

SINGAPORE – Nine men, aged between 17 and 25, were charged on Tuesday after they allegedly handed over their bank accounts and ATM cards to criminal syndicates.

The men were charged with various offences including cheating, facilitating unauthorised access to computer material and unauthorised disclosure of access code.

The police said on Monday that they arrested these men for their suspected involvement in various scams, including China officials impersonation scams, rental scams and bank phishing scams.

The men are: Darren Chang Zhong Wei, 18, Muhammad Khairuddin Bahari, 20, Sim Yi Feng, 20, Ryan Tan Chee Liang, 22, Alvin Phua Khian Tat, 24, Ahmad Syairazi Sahlan, 24, and Tan Xing Yu, 25.

Two men cannot be named as they are under 18.

They are believed to have cheated banks into opening bank accounts before handing over their ATM cards and iBanking credentials to scammers.

They allegedly deceived the banks into believing that they would be the sole operator of the account that they opened with the bank, but later sold or rented these accounts to criminal syndicates for as much as $600 per account.

Three of the men are suspected to have also sold their Singpass credentials to criminal syndicates for the scammers to create new bank accounts.

The cases of the nine men were adjourned.

Money mules are typically those who hand over control of their payment accounts to criminals, or who use their payment accounts to receive or transfer money under the instruction of criminals and scammers.

Between 2020 and 2022, more than 19,000 money mules were investigated by the police.

However, only fewer than 250 were prosecuted as it was difficult to prove that they intended to facilitate criminal activities by selling their bank and Singpass accounts under current laws.

On April 18, amendments to the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act and the Computer Misuse Act were introduced in Parliament,

to make it easier to prosecute money mules and those who abuse their Singpass accounts

in scams and other crimes.

Scam victims in Singapore lost $660.7 million in 2022,

up from $632 million in 2021, bringing the total to almost $1.3 billion lost in two years.

There were 31,728 scam cases reported in 2022, up from 23,933 cases in 2021.