A Singaporean man wasn’t able to hide his nerves passing through the borders at Woodlands Checkpoint last Friday and got himself arrested when the authorities found some incriminating materials on him.
Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers uncovered multiple credit and ATM cards belonging to multiple holders from his bag, including cards from banks such as UOB, POSB, DBS, Maybank, and OCBC. The 39-year-old man subsequently broke and confessed that he was working as a loanshark runner.
How it works in illegal moneylending operations: suspects would open bank accounts and give away their ATM cards and personal identification numbers to loan sharks to facilitate the unlicensed moneylending business. Anyone who allows their bank account or ATM card to be used to facilitate unlicensed moneylending is presumed to have assisted in the business, and are liable to be sentenced to jail, caning, and fines.
The ICA has since referred the case to the Singapore Police Force for investigations.
In a Straits Times report earlier this year, loan sharks have been stepping up their tactics to intimidate debtors into paying up. Aside from the typical old-school methods of vandalizing doors and common corridors, loan sharks would play mind games by sending debtors videos of homes set on fire and pictures of places frequented by their loved ones.
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