6-month jail for man who exchanged obscene videos with online users

SINGAPORE — A man who amassed nearly 300 voyeuristic video clips of schoolgirls using the toilet or in changing rooms, and circulated them online, was jailed six months on Thursday (Oct 5).

Former sales engineer Joel Chew Weichen, 27, was convicted of possessing 280 obscene films for the purposes of distribution.

He was the first among five men to plead guilty to the offence, which was committed using three websites, Sammyboy Forum, SG Horizon Club and Little SG.

The video clips were taken with hidden cameras, many of which were planted in toilets of schools and cafes such as Starbucks and McDonald’s, and the changing rooms of fashion outlets such as Cotton On.

A media relations officer from the Ministry of Education (MOE) lodged a police report after he found out about the videos of various schoolgirls relieving themselves in the toilet or trying on clothes that were on Sammyboy Forum, a predominantly sex-themed online discussion site.

During a raid on Nov 25 last year, Chew was found to have stored the obscene films on four hard drives at his home in Whampoa Drive.

Four other men were arrested in the course of the same police operation after the tip-off from the MOE officer. They include Ali VP Mohamed, 46, an unemployed man who founded SG Horizon Club late last year. He divulged that one Shaun Lee, 28, a fund accountant, is an active user of the site.

Lee was found to have traded obscene and sexually themed films with Skype users Clarence Tang Jia Ming, 25, a marketing specialist, and customer service officer Ong Yi Jie, 27.

The court? cases of these four men are pending.

The court heard on Thursday that Chew accepted an invitation to join SG Horizon Club, a Google group for people to share and download sex-themed videos of Singaporeans. At the same time, he was also a member of Little SG, another Google group of a similar nature. He knew about Little SG from a post on Sammyboy Forum, of which he is a member.

Chew would exchange obscene videos with users of these sites. In order to get new material, he traded films from the obscene video collection that he had downloaded from these platforms. He also shared videos with members who asked for them on discussion threads.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Tang Shangjun noted that SG Horizon Club’s membership base hit some 200 members within a few months of its creation.

The court also heard that those who upload videos on these sites used a web service called Volafile that automatically deletes files after two days. It does not store any logs permanently, so it would be hard to trace the users’ IP addresses.

Chew, whose sentence was backdated to Aug 31 this year, could have been fined at least S$2,000 per film found in his possession, up to a maximum of S$80,000, or jailed up to two years, or both.