3 months’ jail for unemployed man who scammed players on online game MapleStory

SINGAPORE — A 28-year-old unemployed man was sentenced to three months’ jail on Friday (April 3) for scamming 11 gamers on MapleStory, a popular multi-player online role-playing game, of more than S$1,300 by promising them game credits.

Chye Jie He will start serving his sentence on May 28, a day after he is set to register his marriage with his fiancée who is currently pregnant with his child.

On Friday, he pleaded guilty to three charges of deceiving others into believing that he would be sending them “mesos” — MapleStory’s in-game currency — after receiving payment from them. 

The court heard that between January and July last year he would contact his victims and offer to sell them mesos.

Victims would send him payment through PayNow but he would not transfer the mesos as promised. 

One such incident on Jan 11 last year, a male victim paid him S$560.

Investigations revealed that the phone number that Chye had provided the victim on Telegram belonged to his friend. Chye had borrowed the friend’s phone for a short while and linked the number to his own bank account for three days, in the hope of escaping detection and identification.

Another victim fell for the scam on April 20 last year when Chye was already facing police investigations, the court heard.

TRIED TO SHIFT THE BLAME

Chye’s scam grew more sophisticated by July last year. He involved an innocent party and hoped for the blame to be shifted to that person, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jotham Tay said.

On July 9, Chye approached an innocent party named Mr Ng who was offering to sell mesos on Facebook and asked to buy three billion mesos for S$185.

Mr Ng provided his mobile number thinking that Chye would pay him S$185 via PayNow.

Later that same day, Chye approached a victim on Telegram who was looking to buy mesos and offered to sell her four billion mesos for S$185 and gave her Mr Ng’s number to facilitate the transaction.

After the victim sent Mr Ng S$185, Chye lied to Mr Ng that he had transferred the money. 

However, just a few minutes later, Chye told Mr Ng that he did not wish to buy the mesos anymore and would like S$180 back, telling Mr Ng to keep S$5 for himself.

The ruse was discovered after the second victim went to Mr Ng thinking that he had scammed her and demanded to get her S$185 back, failing which she would make a police report.

Police investigations later found that Chye was behind the scam.

For each charge of cheating, Chye could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.