SINGAPORE – Two Singaporean sisters helped fraudsters launder almost $1 million from victims of job, investment and dating scams.
One of them, Nur Syafiqah Mohamad Awal, 20, dishonestly kept around $200,000 of it and spent some on clothing and staycations.
Syafiqah pleaded guilty on Tuesday (March 8) to five charges of money laundering. Her sister, Nur Atiqah Mohamad Awal, 19, also pleaded guilty on the same day to one similar charge.
The sisters were part of a scam which involved at least 39 victims, who reported to the police that they had lost money to swindlers from December 2020 to May last year, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Jeremy Bin.
The victims would come across job offers on social media platforms or via SMSes, and were then asked to buy items online for which they would be paid commission. In other cases, the scammers would befriend victims on dating apps and later ask them to transfer large sums of money for various reasons.
The court heard that their mother, Ms Siti Aidah Abdullah, met two men known only as Raymond and Kelvin on the online dating app Tagged some time between November and December 2020.
They asked Ms Siti to open bank accounts in her name and to send the linked debit cards to them, but she did not know how to do so and asked her daughters for help.
Syafiqah and Atiqah directly contacted Raymond and Kelvin and helped them apply for and send debit cards to Malaysian addresses in exchange for payment. They deleted their WhatsApp…
