SINGAPORE: Wanting to earn cash, a man called a number left on a toilet door and became one of several people embroiled in a type of loan scam that cheated DBS Bank into disbursing S$1.89 million.
Muhammad Fazly Laily, 28, was sentenced to six months’ jail on Thursday (Oct 28) for his role in the scam. He pleaded guilty to one count of acquiring property in his bank account that amounted to criminal proceeds from cheating.
The court heard that Fazly was a freelance video technician at the time of the crime, earning S$600 to S$700 between March 2019 and April 2019.
Sometime in end-March 2019, he went to a coffee shop near Aljunied MRT and went to a toilet. On the back of one of the doors was a handwritten message that said “need cash call this number”.
Fazly did not know who wrote the message nor who the handphone number etched on the door belonged to, but called the number anyway.
An unidentified man picked up the call, and Fazly asked him if he could obtain any amount of cash as a loan. When the man replied “yes”, Fazly asked if the loan would be legal or illegal, and asked the man where he worked.
The unknown man told Fazly that there would be no way that he could obtain the loan from the bank if the loan were illegal.
Fazly was thinking only about getting the cash, so he did not check for the man’s name, workplace information and how the man would help him obtain the bank loan.
Fazly told the man over the phone that he wanted to apply for a bank loan of…
