Stingray thief who threatened ex-girlfriend with her intimate pictures gets jail time

SINGAPORE — He paid for one stingray, but left with two.

He was let off with a conditional warning for stealing the stingray but then reoffended some eight months later, threatening his ex-girlfriend with compromising pictures.

On Tuesday (March 19), the 28-year-old man felt the sting of the law, when he was sentenced to five months’ jail by District Judge Mathew Joseph.

The man cannot be named to protect the identity of his ex-girlfriend.

He pleaded guilty last month to one count of theft, and another count of criminal intimidation.

The court heard that on the afternoon of Aug 23, 2017, the man arrived at GML Aquatics, a fish farm located at Lim Chu Kang, to collect a stingray he had paid a S$50 deposit for.

He was told to contact a worker at the farm when he arrived to retrieve the stingray, which was worth S$250.

Instead of doing so, the man took a stingray out of a tank and placed it inside a plastic bag, then put the bag in his car.

He then re-entered the fish farm and contacted the worker, who retrieved the stingray he had paid for.

Later that day, the worker discovered a missing stingray. Closed-circuit television footage showed the man stealing the stingray, and the man was asked to pay for it.

Instead of paying for the stolen stingray, the man returned to the farm and placed the bag with the stingray outside the farm’s gates.

The man said he stole the stingray “out of greed”, and has made full restitution of S$250 to the fish farm.

Court documents did not state if the stolen stingray survived.

THREATENED TO POST INTIMATE PICTURES ONLINE

The man was given a conditional warning after the incident, but reoffended in May last year, this time threatening to circulate his ex-girlfriend’s compromising pictures.

The court heard that the man and the woman, a 22-year-old Malaysian national, were in a relationship for about a year since May 2017.

From August or September that year, they would send each other naked photos of themselves, but agreed mutually to delete them in October.

On May 26 last year, the woman messaged the man to tell him that she wanted to break up with him.

She initiated the break up because she felt they were “incompatible”, and “constantly quarrelling”, the court was told.

He tried to persuade her to stay in the relationship but was ignored.

Over the next three days, he then sent her a series of photographs over WhatsApp — edited to give the impression that the woman was fully or partially naked.

The pictures included photos of her face and upper torso, edited such that the clothing was blurred out, to give the impression that she was not wearing any. There were also photos of her legs and torso.

It is unclear whether, at the time of these offences, he was still in possession of her naked photos that he had promised to delete.

The messages made the woman worried, and she asked him what he meant by sending such photographs to her.

“(He) then demanded that the victim return his things to him and threatened to make a scene at her home if she did not do so,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Genevieve Pang, who asked the court to impose a five-month jail sentence.

He also threatened to send the photos to her uncle and friends and upload them on Facebook, to “help to make her famous”.

He then sent her a photograph of herself clad only in underwear, suggested that he had her naked pictures, and reiterated his threat to “make her famous”.

Genuinely afraid that the man would act on his threats, the woman promised to meet him on the evening of May 28 last year. However, on that day, she reported him to the police.

The man claimed that he had threatened to circulate the edited photographs of the woman as he “wanted to attract her attention and get her to respond to his messages and calls”.