Singapore repeat offender jailed for S$310,000 contractor scam; 61 victims duped with fake permits, no restitution made
SINGAPORE, June 4 — A 40-year-old repeat offender was sentenced to two-and-a-half years' jail after cheating 61 victims of over S$310,000 (RM1.02 million through a series of contractor scams.
Arivalagan Muthusamy, who was released from jail in December 2022, committed the offences while under a remission order that required him to stay out of trouble until March 28, 2023, according to a report published today in The Straits Times.
He pleaded guilty to 21 counts of cheating involving nearly S$154,000, with more than 40 other related charges taken into consideration. He also received an additional 88-day jail term for breaching the remission order.
Between late 2022 and mid-2023, Arivalagan posed as a representative of building management firms and deceived contractors into transferring money for fake security deposits and permits for jobs such as flooring and air-conditioning work.
He would first contact the contractors and redirect them to a fictitious 'contact person', then impersonate that person to request payments, providing bank account details under his control.
To facilitate the scams, Arivalagan recruited two accomplices, Thomas Sng Jian Wen and Ahammed Md Riaz, to help procure bank accounts used to collect the stolen funds.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Maximilian Chew said the scams were 'planned and premeditated', highlighting the involvement of others and the use of money mule accounts to carry out the offences.
Among the victims, two companies were each cheated of $10,000 after being duped into believing they were paying for a 'permit-to-work' at Capital Tower.
Arivalagan had previous convictions for forgery in 2013 and for computer misuse in a 2021 syndicate linked to gold and cryptocurrency scams.
He has made no restitution to any of the victims.
For each cheating charge, an offender may face up to 10 years' jail and a fine.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Free Malaysia Today
28 minutes ago
- Free Malaysia Today
MCMC calls up logs of all phone calls, says no personal info accessed
Data collected on phone calls and internet usage will be used strictly for 'the generation of official statistics to support evidence-based policymaking', said MCMC. (File pic) PETALING JAYA : The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has defended its directive requiring phone companies to hand over data on all mobile phone calls made from January to March. The commission said no personal information would be accessed, processed, or disclosed by the commission. It said that the data requested was anonymised and contained no information that can be used to identify any person. The telecommunications companies are given the option to either process the data within their own secure environment and submit the required anonymised and aggregated output to the MCMC; or for those without processing capabilities, submit the anonymised data to the commission for processing. 'In both cases, no individual subscriber can be identified through the data collected,' MCMC said in a statement this evening. The statement came hours after the South China Morning Post, quoting industry sources, said that Putrajaya had ordered mobile phone companies to hand over detailed records of phone calls and internet usage as it broadens controls over online activity. ADVERTISEMENT VIDCRUNCH Next Stay Playback speed 1x Normal Quality Auto Back 360p 240p 144p Auto Back 0.25x 0.5x 1x Normal 1.5x 2x 00:00 / 01:09 Skip Ads by The Post's sources said MCMC had sent a letter to telcos calling up detailed call and internet logs for the first three months of this year, as part of the government's mobile phone data project. The data collected would be used strictly for generating official statistics to support 'evidence-based policymaking'. It sought such statistics such as the number of active mobile broadband subscriptions and penetration rates by state, district, mukim, local authority and parliamentary and state constituencies. The data was also used for tourism-related purposes, such as generating indicators on visitor numbers and domestic travel trends, MCMC said. 'The use of mobile phone data as a new source of national statistics is a strategic direction set by the government to strengthen the quality and timeliness of statistical outputs for policy and planning purposes,' it added. MCMC said this initiative follows international best practices, mirroring efforts in countries like Indonesia and Brazil, where anonymised telecommunication data is used to improve national statistics without compromising user privacy.
Free Malaysia Today
4 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Annuar Zaini replaces Farhash as 7-Eleven chairman
Annuar Zaini is a board member of Socso and a senior adviser to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. (Bernama pic) KUALA LUMPUR : 7-Eleven Malaysia Holdings Bhd has appointed Annuar Zaini, 73, as its new independent and non-executive chairman. He replaces Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak, who resigned on May 30, a day after the company's annual general meeting. In a filing with Bursa Malaysia today, 7-Eleven said Annuar is a seasoned civil servant and corporate figure with over 40 years of experience. He is currently a board member of Socso, chairman of Country Annex Sdn Bhd, MRCB Land Sdn Bhd and UDA Holdings Bhd, and senior advisor of international affairs to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.
Free Malaysia Today
4 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Madani economic reforms earn 50% score from Khairy
The number of people who pay taxes in Malaysia is disproportionately smaller than our peers, said Khairy Jamaluddin. (Bernama pic) PETALING JAYA : Former minister Khairy Jamaluddin has given the Madani government a 50% score for its performance on structural economic reforms since its formation in November 2022. Khairy pointed to three key areas that he believed demanded changes – widening the tax base, rationalising subsidies and pension reforms. He said the unity government has yet to carry out meaningful tax reforms to widen its revenue base, which he added was significantly lower even compared with peers in terms of gross domestic product. 'The number of people that pay taxes in Malaysia is disproportionately smaller than our peers, and that creates a problem for the government because your revenue base is too small. That's why we introduced the GST (goods and services tax),' he said, referring to the tax scheme introduced by the Najib Razak government in 2015. He pointed out that the planned expansion of the sales and service tax has been repeatedly delayed, while maintaining that a consumption tax like the GST was the way to go. (Government figures show that GST raised RM43.8 billion in 2018, while SST for 2024 is estimated at 44.7 billion) On subsidy rationalisation, Khairy said the biggest hurdle was targeting the RON95 petrol subsidies, which cost Putrajaya RM20 billion in 2023. The former Rembau MP said the last major reform needed was pension reforms, which is expected to balloon to around RM30 billion in the next decade. 'And it's going to rise because of the number of civil servants retiring, and life expectancy has also gone up,' he said, adding that the solution was getting rid of pensions for new government hires and shifting to EPF contributions. 'So if out of three big structural reforms, it's one and a half. So it's 50%,' he said in an episode of the Game of Impossible podcast with former minister Idris Jala and his son, Leon. The government is set to implement targeted subsidies for RON95 in the second half of the year, though details have not been released yet. Putrajaya has also announced that new civil servants would no longer get pensions but would contribute to EPF and the Social Security Organisation. Khairy reiterated that these reforms were important to ensure the country had enough funds for public services like health, education, and transport. 'You don't have enough money to make all the changes you want,' he said.
