SINGAPORE, Jan 19 — Singapore police have arrested six more individuals in connection with a series of unauthorised attempts to alter registered residential addresses through the country’s Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) online service, Channel News Asia (CNA) reported yesterday.
The latest arrests bring the total number of individuals detained to 13, the media outlet added.
According to CNA, the arrested suspects, five men and one woman, aged between 18 and 39, were apprehended during island-wide operations on Friday. This follows a previous round of arrests made between January 11 and 13, when seven people were taken into custody.
The 13 suspects are believed to be involved in at least 66 separate cases of attempted address changes, using stolen or compromised Singpass accounts.
Of those arrested, nine are being investigated under the Computer Misuse Act, while two face additional charges for unlawfully disclosing access codes.
One individual is also under investigation for transmitting someone else’s Singpass credentials, while another is being probed for allegedly benefiting from criminal conduct.
Some suspects are being investigated by the ICA for possible breaches of national registration regulations.
Four of the suspects, aged between 26 and 38, have already been formally charged. Three of these suspects, including Ng Wei Chang, Yuen Mun Fei, and Koh Hong Yan, appeared in court on Friday, where prosecutors revealed that their alleged crimes were believed to be part of a larger syndicated operation.
A 31-year-old man was also charged on Wednesday for his involvement in disclosing ICA access codes to facilitate the illegal address changes. He is accused of “abetting the disclosure of the PIN from ICA, to facilitate the unauthorised change of a victim's address.”
The arrests come after ICA revealed on January 11 that perpetrators were exploiting compromised Singpass accounts to alter residential addresses fraudulently.
Investigations by ICA, which are ongoing, began in September 2024, following complaints about unauthorised changes to residential details.
Offences under the Computer Misuse Act can carry penalties of up to three years in prison, fines up to S$10,000 (RM33,000), or both.
