The honeymoon is over for seven fake married couples and their matchmakers.
At a press conference yesterday, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) recounted how they cracked one of the biggest illegal marriage syndicates to date, Channel NewsAsia reports.
The scheme, which reads like a crime series, involved 17 people ranging from 22 to 45 in age. Over the past four years, mastermind Jeremy Tan Chin Hock, 32, arranged for Singaporean men to marry Vietnamese women in exchange for sums ranging between S$800 and S$4,500.
Tan and his marriage brokers earned between S$6,000 and S$16,000 for their services.
While sham marriages in Singapore went up by 23 percent last year, as a general trend, the numbers are declining. ICA figures show that 53 people were convicted of offenses related to marriages of convenience last year, down from 124 in 2013, according to the CNA report.
Cracking the case
ICA began investigating the syndicate in March last year after a tip-off, The Straits Times reported. Assistant Superintendent Ong Teck Wee told ST that the men involved had a common motive: they were all in need of money. Many of the men were unemployed or in debt while the women were willing to pay in order to remain in Singapore.
Ringleader Jeremy Tan Chin Hock took care to ensure his fake husbands and wives avoided detection by instructing them to learn about each other’s backgrounds to appear as if they had normal relationships.
While the couples did not all live together, Tan went above and beyond to make the marriages look real. One case involved flying a man to Vietnam to better understand his future wife’s family and culture, according to the ST report.
While ICA officials said it was a difficult case to crack, Wee told ST that it all started coming together after the first couple confessed.
Six Singaporean men and five Vietnamese women have since been jailed for six to 18 months, while two of the women involved left Singapore before being charged. One man was not charged because of a medical condition.
For his role, Tan was sentenced to two years in jail and a S$42,000 fine in January.
Two of his marriage brokers’ cases are still before the courts.
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