Recent cases of Telegram-linked crimes

SINGAPORE - Here are some recent cases involving the misuse of Telegram:

Obscene photos and videos - some of them of Singapore women - were shared on the now-defunct SG Nasi Lemak chat group on Telegram. This was first reported in 2019.

The group had 44,000 members at its peak.

One of the administrators of the group was jailed and fined last year, while another man was given a mandatory treatment order. Two young people were given probation over their involvement.

Four men were charged in court last year with the possession or transmission of obscene materials through a Telegram chat group which is no longer active.

There were obscene photos and videos of women being circulated on the group without the women's consent. The group had 25,000 members at the time.

Three of the members were jailed and fined, and another is set to return to court for a pre-trial conference.

Iris Koh, who founded anti-vaccine group Healing The Divide, urged parents to disrupt operations at paediatric vaccination centres in December last year.

A month before, Koh and her husband, Mr Raymond Ng, were placed under investigation for allegedly instigating members in the Telegram channel to call and overwhelm public hotlines, including those that help the public with Covid-19 issues.

The group chat has more than 5,800 members as at January.

In January, the Health Sciences Authority mounted a 24-hour operation against the distributor and peddlers of an e-vaporiser distribution network.

Telegram was used to illegally advertise and supply such prohibited items to a large number of people in these chat groups. E-vaporisers and related components, with an estimated street value of close to $200,000, were seized following the operation.

Officers from the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) arrested 77 drug traffickers linked to Telegram transactions between January 2019 and Sept 17 last year.

The agency said on Nov 30 last year that five of them were known to be operators of Telegram drug channels. CNB also nabbed 154 drug abusers linked to Telegram transactions in that period, with 71 per cent of those arrested below the age of 30.