Jail for man who got 34 teen girls to send him nude photos by posing as woman, offering ‘influencer’ jobs

SINGAPORE — Desperate to get obscene photographs from young girls, Adrian Tan Jun Jie pretended to be a woman named "Audrey Tay" and contacted attractive girls he found on Instagram, offering them fake jobs as influencers.

He would ask them to audition for the job by doing photoshoots at home and by soliciting nude or revealing photos from them this way.

After one 13-year-old girl complied, Tan gave her his own mobile phone number, posed as Audrey’s male assistant and demanded that she meet him and perform explicit sexual acts.

In particular, he said that he wanted her to be sweaty and smelly because he had a fetish for sweaty bodies and smelly feet. He also asked her to secretly film her female classmates changing in the toilet.

On Thursday (April 7), Tan, 25, was jailed for three-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to 11 charges of criminal intimidation, cheating and sexually exploiting a child or young person.

Another 26 similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

District Judge Kamala Ponnampalam noted the “staggering number of victims involved” — 34 girls aged between 11 and 18, whom Tan had targeted over a period of seven months from 2017 to 2018.

HOW THE SCHEME WORKED

The court heard that he began his exploits in Oct 2017 when he began browsing Instagram to look for attractive girls.

He would get their email addresses from their Instagram profiles and contact them using his Audrey persona, saying “she” had an influencer job offer for them.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Hidayat Amir told the court that Tan wanted to cast a wide net and ensnare many victims.

Tan would usually write in the emails: “If you want to earn S$25-$50 per day, here’s your chance. Clothes will be mailed to you and all you have to do is just take photos of yourself in the outfit that will be mailed to you.”

When girls replied to him, he moved the conversation to the Line mobile application, asking them to add "Audrey" with the username “Audreytxy”. His Line account was not tagged to a mobile number.

There, he asked the victims to send him selfies before asking for more revealing photos, such as of them in their undergarments. Some did so while others declined, saying they were no longer interested in the job offer at that point.

Court documents detailed how he cheated 10 of the victims.

The 13-year-old girl received an email in May 2018 in which she was promised to be paid weekly. Tan also wrote that selected participants would receive an iPhone for “quality pictures”.

When they got in touch, Tan — posing as Audrey — said that there would be a selection process for the job, during which 40 girls would take part but only 10 would be recruited.

He asked the 13-year-old to do a “mini photoshoot” and asked for her measurements, then directed her to take revealing pictures.

Shortly after, he gave the girl his phone number, lying that it belonged to Audrey's male assistant "JJ". 

The victim complied with his instructions to contact JJ and they began exchanging messages on WhatsApp. JJ began demanding the victim to meet him to engage in sexual acts.

When she turned him down, Tan, again posing as Audrey, threatened to circulate the victim’s nude photos on Facebook and email them to her school.

She then agreed out of fear, but confided in her mother and they made a police report. She did not meet Tan.

POSED AS AUDREY’S HUSBAND

The youngest victim, then aged 11, contacted Tan in 2018 to ask about details of the job when she saw his job offer on Instagram.

Tan, masquerading as Audrey, told her that "she" was from a well-known modelling agency and that the girl should send photos of herself to be selected for an ongoing competition.

The girl then sent Tan photos of herself in the nude, but grew uncomfortable and stopped.

Around this time, Tan reached out to another victim, then aged 16. After offering her the influencer job opportunity, he asked for photos and a video of her brushing her teeth in the toilet in a seductive manner.

But she soon came across a YouTube video about a scam involving a male individual asking for photos from little girls.

She grew suspicious and did not contact Audrey for a few months. She then received an email from someone calling himself "Adrian Tan", who claimed to be Audrey’s husband.

Tan said in the email that Audrey was stressed out from losing her job because the victim had stopped contacting her, and the stress could affect her pregnancy. The victim then began messaging Audrey on Line again and sent nude photos, before stopping out of discomfort.

‘ELABORATE ENTERPRISE’

DPP Hidayat, who sought 40 to 49 months’ jail, argued that Tan had concocted an elaborate scheme to ensnare the victims in order to “satiate his sexual lust”.

The prosecutor also referred to the recent case of De Beers Wong Tian Jun, whose jail term was more than doubled to eight years in the High Court last year. Wong had posed as an agent for wealthy “sugar daddies” and lured 11 women into giving him nude photos and free sex.

In mitigation, Tan’s lawyer Kalaithasan Karuppaya said that his client was “truly remorseful” and “wishes to put this dark episode behind in his life and start afresh”.

Tan now works odd jobs and would have looked for a full-time one if not for his court case, the defence counsel added.

In sentencing Tan, District Judge Ponnampalam said that the key sentencing consideration was deterrence “to ensure vulnerable minors are not exploited in this manner”.

She said that Tan did not just demonstrate opportunistic behaviour, but also pulled off “an elaborate enterprise that was carefully planned and orchestrated” with the sole purpose of enticing minors.

“The accused did befriend them, so to speak, and won over their confidence with the scheme, so there was certainly an element of abuse of trust,” the judge added.