High Court upholds reformative training for 21-year-old cheat with history of ‘funny’ ideas
SINGAPORE — A 21-year-old cheat’s appeal for either a jail term or probation was dismissed on Friday (April 6) by a High Court judge, who upheld his sentence of reformative training.
Despite Tan Guan Quan’s pledge not to entertain “funny” ideas and re-offend, Justice Chan Seng Onn was not persuaded that he would change for the better without institutional help.
Incarceration would “remind you, when you start to think of funny ideas, to pull yourself back”, the judge told Tan, who has two previous brushes with the law and was on probation when he went on a cheating spree that landed him with 410 charges this time.
Between July 2015 and January 2016, he cheated 34 people of close to S$38,000. He placed “job” advertisements on online platforms such as Carousell and Facebook, offering to pay S$250 to those who replied “Y” to SMS messages sent to their mobile phones and sent over screenshots of the codes they received.
His victims did not know it, but Tan was actually using their post-paid Singtel phone lines to purchase gaming credits, and the SMS messages were to confirm that they wished to buy the credits.
He also failed to pay his victims for their efforts.
His other charges included unauthorised use of a 20-year-old’s Singtel account to purchase gaming credits in August 2015, and deceiving an 18-year-old two months later into paying him S$95 for 130,000 gaming credits that were never transferred.
Tan was arrested in Jan 2016 and, while under investigation, he stole a SIM card that was left unattended at a Singtel store in July 2016.
Tan told the court he initially committed the offences for thrills but later used the money to fund his diploma studies.
But Tan found himself caught in a lie on Friday when he sought a one-week adjournment for his sentence, saying he needed to settle his son’s school and living arrangements – Justice Chan pointed out that the school year had already started.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Haniza Abnass pointed out his lack of regard for the law and the escalation of his criminal activities over the years.
When he was 16, Tan conspired with a friend to steal SIM cards that were unattended at exhibition booths and dishonestly retained a stolen phone.
He was sentenced to 24 months of probation but about three months before completing the term, he was convicted of gaming in a public place and sentenced to 15 months’ probation.
For cheating, Tan could have been jailed for up to three years and/or fined.
