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SINGAPORE: A 47-year-old woman was sentenced to prison for her involvement in money laundering crimes, after allowing her online lover and another friend to use her bank account to receive funds from scam victims.
Noorhudah Binte Sa’ad pleaded guilty to 15 counts, and 35 other counts were taken into consideration, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said in a press release on Tuesday (September 29).
She was sentenced to 22 months and 3 weeks in jail last Friday.
Investigations revealed that she had agreed to receive funds on behalf of her online lover named Lucky Mentus and a friend known to her as Lynn.
Noorhudah was working as a cleaner in a hotel in Singapore when she committed the crimes, receiving at least S $ 187,560 that was established as a result of compromise of commercial email and internet love scams between December 2015 and September 2016.
After receiving the funds, Noorhudah would withdraw the money and hand it over to Lucky Mentus and Lynn’s contacts in Singapore or Malaysia.
“Lucky Mentus told Noorhudah that she needed a bank account in Singapore to receive loan repayments from her friends in Singapore, while Lynn explained that she needed Noorhudah’s help to receive funds from her sister and her husband’s business partner,” said the police.
She agreed to help despite suspecting that Lucky Mentus’ friends and Lynn’s husband could be scammers, police said.
He also continued to allow Lucky Mentus and Lynn to use their bank accounts to receive funds even after police opened an investigation against him in 2016, police said.
LEE: Woman jailed for money laundering crimes after helping her boyfriend to receive money from the victims
CONTINUE TO RECEIVE FUNDS DESPITE THE INVESTIGATION
In February 2016, Noorhudah received S $ 5,000 derived from fraud on his UOB account, leading to an investigation by officers from the Bedok Police Division.
Despite this, he continued to allow the UOB account, along with his accounts at DBS and OCBC, to be used to receive funds on behalf of Lucky Mentus and Lynn. He had also approached three colleagues with requests to use their bank accounts to receive funds on Lynn’s behalf.
In October 2017, while under investigation by the Department of Business Affairs, Noorhudah also attempted to acquire S $ 41,000 from a scam victim, police said.
The victim was contacted by a person named Joanne, who she had befriended on a social media platform.
Joanne told the victim that she needed a bank account to receive the loan repayment. The victim gave Joanne the details of her husband’s bank account, and was then told to withdraw the funds and deliver the cash to Noorhudah in Singapore.
The victim’s husband felt the arrangement was suspicious and filed a police report.
Anyone convicted of a money laundering offense can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined up to S $ 500,000.
“Money laundering crimes are of a serious nature as they facilitate the withholding of profits derived from serious crimes by the perpetrators of predicate crimes,” police said.
“Violators need to be deterred from using Singapore’s financial system as a conduit for illicit funds, as it affects Singapore’s reputation as an international financial center.”
