SINGAPORE, April 21 — Unable to afford the prices listed in online sex advertisements, De Beers Wong Tian Jun hatched a plan, putting out his own advertisement to trick women into giving him free sex and nude photographs.
He claimed to be a freelance agent with wealthy clients willing to pay escorts up to S$20,000 (about RM61,922) a month for sexual services.
He told the women that in order for these clients to determine their suitability for such “sugar daddy” arrangements, they had to send him their nude photographs, have their nude photos taken, or have sex with him. He also filmed some of the acts.
In all, he deceived at least 11 victims aged between 18 and 24. One began suffering anxiety attacks after they met.
Wong, a Singaporean now aged 39, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ jail and a fine of S$20,000 yesterday after pleading guilty last month to 10 charges of cheating, criminal intimidation and making an obscene film.
District Judge John Ng, who took into consideration another 26 similar charges for sentencing, described Wong as a multiple offender who had practised deception and exploitation to gratify his own sexual desires.
“(Such) an elaborate and well-executed plan over 10 months makes such offences particularly deserving of punishment,” the judge added.
While District Judge Ng said that he would have run seven of the individual sentences consecutively, resulting in a 57-month sentence, he noted that he had to consider the totality principle.
This is a sentencing principle that seeks to ensure punishments for multiple offences are “not crushing and not in keeping with a past record and future prospects”.
“In this case, he has no criminal antecedents and is remorseful,” the judge said, so he ended up running five of the individual sentences consecutively.
Wong will begin serving his sentence in two weeks and remains out on bail in the meantime.
The plot
The court earlier heard that Wong had deceived his victims between April 2015 and January 2016.
Aside from putting out advertisements, he created chat conversations purportedly between himself and his non-existent clients.
Court documents detailed what five victims went through. None of them can be named due to court orders to protect their identities.
One of them, then aged 24, responded to Wong’s advertisement in October 2015. He introduced himself as “Kel” and said that she could earn S$10,000 to S$20,000 a month as a “sugar babe” to one of his supposed clients.
When she expressed reluctance to send him nude photos of herself, he told her: “All my girls take skimpy pics so you will be on a losing end.” She then sent him two photos.
He then lied that he needed to meet her to have a photoshoot and have sex with her so that he could rate her performance for his clients. Women who refused to undergo the process would “have to settle” for low-paying clients, he told her.
She agreed to meet him after he said that a potential client had paid his last sugar babe S$16,000.
After their meeting in a room at Hotel 81 Kovan, she experienced anxiety attacks triggered by memories of the incident, occasionally accompanied by shortness of breath, headaches, nausea and giddiness.
She also began having sleeping problems and nightmares. She was later diagnosed with adjustment disorder with anxiety.
Wong continued trying to persuade her to meet a second time. He lied that his mobile phone had crashed and he had lost all the nude photos he had taken of her, and when she did not respond, he said that he would introduce another sugar babe to the client.
When she asked him to delete the nude photos she had previously sent him, he lied that he had. She eventually told him that she could not continue with the job and stopped replying to his messages.
A few months later, in January 2016, she asked him again to delete her photos but he agreed to do so only if she provided sexual services to him.
She said that she was doing him a favour by not going to the police, to which Wong replied: “Now I have to pass your photos to my friends. In case anything happens to me, they will use the photos as they wish.”
Feeling afraid, she filed a police report against him.
Two other victims who had allowed him to take their nude photos later “experienced fear and paranoia” that he would leak the photos, the prosecution said.
Another blamed herself for responding to Wong and did not make a police report, afraid that he would sell her photos.
For each cheating charge, he could have been jailed for up to three years or fined, or punished with both.
For criminal intimidation, he could have been jailed for up to two years or fined, or both. — TODAY
CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this article reported that the judge fined Wong S$15,000 and sentenced him to jail. The Attorney-General’s Chambers has clarified that the fine should be S$20,000 instead.
