12 People Investigated for Allegedly Being Involved in Extortion Letters That Were Sent to Politicians

By
Kimi Tan
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12 people are being investigated for allegedly being involved in extortion letters sent to people in Singapore.

Police said there were over 170 reports of victims receiving extortion letters with manipulated obscene photos of themselves between March and April 2024.

Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, as well as Ministers of Parliament (MPs) Tan Wu Meng and Edward Chia, were among the victims of these extortion letters.

The letters were sent by post to the victims’ workplaces and contained manipulated photographs made by sourcing pictures of the victims’ faces and superimposing them “on obscene photographs of a man and a woman purportedly in an intimate and compromising position.”

Preliminary investigations show that photographs and workplace addresses appear to be obtained from publicly available online sources.

Victims Were Threatened To Transfer Money

Police said the letters warned of threatening consequences unless the victims contacted the email address provided in the letters.

After contacting the email address, they would then be threatened to transfer money to prevent “compromising photographs and videos” of themselves from being leaked and exposed on social media.

According to the police, a 50-year-old man lost S$20,000 after responding to the email address and transferring the money to a bank account allegedly provided by the other part.

12 People Have Been Investigated For Suspected Involvement

Police said in a news release on 1 May that seven men and five women, aged between 18 and 46, had purportedly provided bank accounts and SIM cards used to commit a series of extortion.

They were “allegedly involved in either procuring bank accounts for criminal activities or facilitated or assisted in the unauthorised access of Singpass accounts, or purchased and relinquished local SIM cards which were obtained through illegal means.
“All of which were alleged to have been facilitating the criminal activities of overseas scam syndicates.”

According to preliminary investigations, the 12 people had purportedly received or were promised commissions.

At least S$115,000 in suspected criminal proceeds, some of which were allegedly linked to other scam cases, have been recovered. Police added that an array of electronic devices were also seized.

A 23-year-old woman will be charged in court today (2 May) for facilitating unauthorised access to computer material under the Computer Misuse Act.

Police Advisory On Extortionary Mails

Police advise members of the public to adopt the following crime prevention measures:

  • With advancements to photo and video editing technology, including the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools, manipulated photographs and videos may increasingly be used for extortion.
  • If you receive a manipulated photograph or video, remain calm. Ignore any instructions to initiate contact or make money transfers. Doing so emboldens the other party to extort more money from you. Report the matter to the Police immediately and put the letter in a separate storage bag for handover to the Police.
  • Never share provocative photos/videos of yourself online or through chat apps as they might fall into the wrong hands.

Some may say: “But I sent it as a disappearing message, so the other person can’t screenshot or save it.”

You think people only have one device nowadays ah?

People now have laptops, iPads, and even multiple phones, so it’s really easy to just use another device to take a picture of a “view once photo” on another device.

To be safe, just don’t send anything sus online.

Digital footprint guys, digital footprint.

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Kimi Tan