Man to be charged with aiding to launder over S$4 million in criminal proceeds, including from OCBC phishing scam

SINGAPORE — The police have arrested a 31-year-old man for allegedly opening a United Overseas Bank (UOB) account that was used to transact more than S$4 million in criminal proceeds, including those from a OCBC bank phishing scam last year.

The man will be charged on Tuesday (July 19) with entering an arrangement to help another person retain benefits from criminal conduct, the police said in a statement on Monday.

The police received a report on Dec 26 last year from a victim of a OCBC bank phishing scam, who alleged that there were unauthorised transactions made from his bank account that resulted in a loss of more than S$100,000.

Initial investigations found that a sum of more than S$18,000 of the purported victim’s money had been transferred to a UOB corporate bank account.

The police said that the 31-year-old man allegedly used his Corppass credentials to open a corporate account for a locally incorporated firm in November last year. Corppass is an authorisation system for entities to manage digital service access of employees who need to perform corporate transactions.

The man then allegedly relinquished the bank account to an “unknown person” in exchange for monetary benefits.

The bank account was later used to facilitate high-value transactions between Dec 20 and 27 last year, which saw more than S$4 million passing through the account.

The police said: “The 31-year-old man had purportedly entered into an arrangement with an unknown person in November 2021 to allow the use of his bank account for the transfer of and withdrawal of benefits of criminal conduct.”

They did not say if all of the S$4 million were allegedly linked to the OCBC phishing scam.

The police also did not say whether this scam was the same one as the much-publicised phishing scam where almost 800 customers lost millions of dollars in total, court documents showed.

Seven Singapore youth aged 19 to to 22 were charged in February with money laundering offences in relation to that phishing scam. 

Leong Jun Xian, 20, became the first of seven to plead guilty in April. He was sentenced to 12 months' reformative training earlier this month.

Anyone found guilty of entering an arrangement to assist another person to retain the benefits from criminal conduct can be jailed a maximum of 10 years or fined up to S$500,000, or both.