Singapore considering canning for financial scammers; to tackle malicious websites

Singapore, Mar 4 (PTI) Singapore will consider caning financial scammers in certain cases, in recognition of the serious harm they cause, Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said in Parliament on Tuesday.

The Minister was responding to a suggestion from MP Tan Wu Meng in her speech laying out the Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) spending plans for the year ahead.

Tan had earlier called for mandatory caning for financial scammers in egregious cases.

“We must send a clear message to financial scammers, the syndicates and those who abet them: If you mess with our people, make off with the life savings of Singaporeans, scam Singaporeans, we must do everything in our power to teach the financial scammers a lesson they won’t forget,” Channel News Asia quoted Tan as saying.

Sun agreed with the need for stiff and deterrent sentences against those who facilitate scams.

After the recent introduction of new guidelines by a sentencing advisory panel, jail terms have generally been imposed for offences which facilitate scams, going as high as 19 months in one case, she noted.

Minister Sun also announced that efforts to better detect money mule activity will be ramped up this year.

“We have been clamping down on them, because they are the main way overseas financial scammers launder their ill-gotten gains and transfer it out of Singapore,” she said.

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) will share more information with banks on known mule accounts, to improve their fraud analytics and enable them to uncover other mule accounts, she said.

“We will also work with the industry to implement cooling-off measures for certain activities which are tell-tale signs of money mule activity,” she said.

Sun warned that anyone seeking an easy profit by passing on their SIM cards or bank accounts to strangers, while “turning a blind eye” to what they are used for, would be breaching the law.

“Let me be clear. This is a crime and there is an imprisonment term for passing on your SIM cards or bank accounts to facilitate scams. Claiming ignorance does not get you off the hook,” said Sun.

Over 8,000 money mules and financial scammers were investigated last year, from 25 islandwide anti-scam enforcement operations by the SPF, said Sun.

Of them, over 660 have been charged in court and will be jailed if found guilty, she said.

In her speech, Sun reiterated that scams were a huge concern globally, and a scourge Singapore has been fighting for several years.

Despite efforts such as making banking apps malware-resistant and blocking calls from known scam numbers, the total amount lost to scams still hit a new high of SGD1.1 billion last year, she said.

This was a 70 per cent increase from the year before, noted Sun.

“Many people are rightfully very concerned about this, and so is the government. We must and we will redouble our efforts in this fight against scams,” she said.

Separately, the Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo on Tuesday said that with the rapid proliferation of websites used for financial scams and other malicious cyber activities, the government is considering how to harness technology to autonomously disrupt these more rapidly.

“We will continue to review our laws, to ensure their ability to deal with traditional crimes committed in cyberspace, and strengthen our regulatory frameworks, to better leverage technology to combat cybercrimes,” she added, while laying out the ministry’s spending plans for the year.

Teo, who is also Minister for Digital Development and Information, said in parliament that the threat landscape was increasingly complex.

“Criminals are exploiting technology, in particular, artificial intelligence (AI), to carry out more sophisticated crimes and to hit more victims,” the Channel quoted Teo as saying.