Man jailed for cheating loan shark who hired him to harass debtors

SINGAPORE — He was hired by a loan shark to harass borrowers by chaining up their gates.

Instead, Muhammad Khairul Ismail hatched a plan to deceive the unlicensed moneylender to give him payment without completing the job: He would chain the gates, take a video to send to the loan shark, then remove the chains.

The 34-year-old pleaded guilty on Wednesday (Jan 6) to one count of cheating and an unrelated charge of online betting.

He was jailed 11 days for the cheating offence and will serve another four days behind bars as he did not pay the S$1,000 fine he received for online gambling.

He has appealed the sentence and is out on S$15,000 bail. 

The court heard that Khairul had reached out to the loan shark, whom he knew only as “Lucas”, in November 2019 when he came across a job offer.

The job involved locking up the gates of Lucas’ debtors, pasting a note on their doors, recording the acts, then sending the videos to Lucas as proof.

Khairul communicated with Lucas via messaging platform WhatsApp and was promised S$100 to S$120 for each completed job.

On Dec 10, 2019, after receiving instructions from Lucas, he proceeded to a borrower’s home and locked up the gate with two bicycle locks.

He also pasted a note on one of the locks, instead of the gate, to prevent damaging the debtor’s gate.

He took a video of the gate before removing the locks and leaving the gate in its original condition. He then sent the video to the loan shark and was paid S$120 for the job.

Two other incidents where he cheated Lucas in the same manner were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The offences came to light after Lucas forwarded the videos to the debtors and the police were alerted to the case. Lucus’ identity has not been established.

Separately, Khairul was found to have gambled using a mobile application between December 2019 and February last year.

To get credits to place bets on the app, he would send messages to several agents to receive bank account details for the purpose of money transfer.

He placed bets amounting to at least S$1,120.25.

For cheating, he could have been jailed up to 10 years or fined, or punished with both.

For online gambling, he could have been fined up to S$5,000 or jailed six months, or both.