Man Pretended To Be Customs Officer & Successfully Cheated 8 People Of Over $22,000

What is up with people and cheating?

No no, I’m not talking about people cheating on their partners or people cheating during their exams, though both are definitely very serious problems too.

I’m talking about people cheating others of their money.

They prey on the innocent and naive and cheat them of all of their money.

And it’s sad that some of them gave whatever they had, and even borrowed money from their friends and family, just for what these cheaters promised, only to find out that they’re never going to get it back.

Serial Cheater Cheats Over $22K From 8 Victims

41-year-old Muhammad Helmi Mohamed Shariff is a serial cheater who managed to scam eight victims $22,390 over a short period of a few months.

Here’s how it all happened.

After he was released early from a corrective training stint for previous cheating offences, Helmi met a 41-year-old Malaysian cleaner at Tampines MRT Station in April 2018.

After realising that he was a “gullible person of little means”, he pretended to be a Singapore Customs officer and befriended the man.

He told him that he could buy items for cheap and then resell them back in Malaysia.

Two Cars For $300

He offered the cleaner two cars – a Proton Perdana and a Mercedes Benz – for only $300.

The victim willingly gave the $300 and really believed that he would get the cars the next day.

Only to hear from Helmi that the cars have been impounded in Johor and that he needed to pay $1,000 for them to be released.

He handed him the money but ultimately reported the incident to the police after Helmi kept making excuses.

Victim Recommended Another Victim To Scammer

For some reason, in the midst of this, Helmi managed to convince him to introduce more “customers” to him.

The cleaner told another cleaner about the chance to buy gold bars for cheap, and she immediately gave the money to him so that he could help her pass it to Helmi.

However, Helmi later told her that it wasn’t enough and she gave even more money to him.

Subsequently, Helmi discovered that she wanted to become a homeowner, so he showed her photographs of two landed properties after she told him about her desired locations.

He then claimed that the Government had repossessed them and the Singapore Customs was selling them for $750.

Not wanting to miss out on such a great opportunity, she transferred the amount to him and paid $600 more after he told her she needed to pay for “approval letters” for the purchase.

By mid-December 2018, she had given him $3,900 for items that were “seized” by Singapore customs, like luxury designer bags and jewellery.

A Victim Actually Borrowed Money To Pay Him

And here’s the sad part, she actually borrowed money from all her friends and relatives, as well as pawned her wedding jewellery in order to give Helmi the sum of money.

On 15 January 2019, she asked for a refund because Helmi clearly didn’t deliver whatever he promised her.

But since he had already spent all of the money, he somehow convinced her to get a loan from an unlicensed moneylender and scammed her of another $1,000 for a “processing fee”.

A Piano, iPhone and MacBook

The next victim is a Malaysian woman who was, once again, introduced by the very first victim.

She gave Helmi $1,370 after he promised her a piano, iPhone and Macbook that were supposedly seized by Customs.

But he later returned $900 to her after she realised that a gold chain she bought from him was fake and threatened to call the police on him.

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A Smart Scammer

In another situation, Helmi chanced upon a 76-year-old retiree when they shared a table at a hawker centre near Haig Road in December 2018.

He befriended the older man and earned his trust by regularly taking him out for meals and shopping. He also gifted him a fake luxury watch, a chain, bracelet, and two rings, which were actually just costume jewellery.

After profiling his victim, he realised that the best way to target him was through luxury watches because he liked them.

Helmi once again took on the role of an immigration officer and told the older man that he could help him buy luxury watches in the transit area for a much lower price.

Intrigued by this, the older man gave him $9,000 over 24 occasions for 10 Rolex and Omega watches.

He did not notice anything was wrong, but his son did when he noticed how much his father transferred out of their bank account when he checked.

It is, however, not known as to whether he reported the incident to the police.

Not A First Time Offender

Helmi is not a first-time offender.

He was previously sentenced to five years of corrective training in 2013 for cheating offences.

An offender is usually not going to be given an unconditional early release for factors such as good behaviour if they’re going through corrective training.

After serving two-thirds of their sentence, offenders will be eligible for release on licence.

As such, Helmi was released on a licence that made it compulsory for him to abide by the rules of his early release, otherwise, he will be sent back to prison. And it was during this time that he committed the string of cheating offences.

If you think that he was only caught once in 2013, you’re wrong.

He was also jailed three times in 2004, 2006 and 2009 for cheating.

He has now been sentenced to a minimum of seven years of preventive detention after he pleaded guilty to five counts of cheating with another 11 charges taken into consideration for sentencing.

This punishment is so severe that it is only imposed when the court deems that a recalcitrant offender needs to be locked away in order to protect the public from him.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Sanjiv Vaswani noted that Helmi’s actions demonstrated a “lack of propensity for rehabilitation”. This was also supported by a preventive detention suitability report that found that Helmi had a 30% chance of reoffending in the next two years.

How To Avoid Getting Scammed?

First of all, the general rule of thumb is, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Secondly, you should only make purchases through established companies through their official sites.

Also, never ever give out your personal information and bank details like your Internet bank account username and password. This also includes your one-time password codes from tokens as the information can be easily abused by criminals to do criminal activities.

If you have any information regarding this scam or similar crimes, or if you have any questions, you can call the police hotline at 1800 255 0000, or visit www.police.gov.sg/iwitness.

If you’re in need of scam-related advice, you can call the anti-scam helpline at 1800 722 6688 or visit www.scamalert.sg.

If you would like to receive up-to-date messages about scams, you can join the “Let’s Fight Scams” campaign at www.scamalert.sg/fight.