Man gets jail for pretending to be ex-schoolmate, soliciting sex online
A person using a laptop. (File photo: iStock)
SINGAPORE: Over a period of five years, a man pretended to be his ex-schoolmate online, making social media posts that led to the woman being contacted by strangers asking to meet up for sex.
Pay Wee Meng, 27, was on Thursday (Mar 24) sentenced to 12 weeks' jail after pleading guilty to two counts of stalking under the Protection from Harassment Act. Two more charges were considered for sentencing.
The victim's identity is protected by a gag order. The offender and victim were former secondary schoolmates.
The court heard that after graduating from secondary school, Pay created social media accounts using the victim's name and photographs from her own accounts.
"Using the accounts which he created, he posted captions with sexual connotations as he wanted other guys to talk to him about sex," stated court documents.
From 2016 to 2021, Pay impersonated the victim on Tumblr, posting photos of her and communicating with other people to suggest that she was open to having sex with strangers.
He also did this on another website from 2016 to 2018. Similar actions on two other social media platforms formed the charges taken into consideration.
The victim found out when she was informed by friends and strangers that there was someone pretending to be her online. She checked and saw her photographs and the posts soliciting sex.
As a result of the posts, she was contacted by strangers asking her to meet up for sex. Her friends also received text messages from strangers asking if they knew the victim.
The prosecutor said Pay's actions had caused harm to the victim's reputation as well as her mental health.
Her stress was aggravated when she was contacted by strangers for sex, he said, as people were able to trace the photographs used by Pay to the victim's real social media accounts.
Pay, who was unrepresented, asked for a lenient sentence as he did not earn much money and needed to support his family. He also said he had learnt from his mistakes.
