SINGAPORE, July 13 — A delivery man posed as an oil and bunker trader on a dating application and deceived a woman into transferring him S$92,510.

Yesterday, Muhammad Sharul Anoor, a 30-year-old Singaporean, was sentenced to 19 months’ jail after pleading guilty to seven cheating charges.

Ten similar charges were also taken into consideration for sentencing.

The woman, now aged 34, made a total of 17 transfers to Sharul in eight months, from August 2022 to March 2023.

She used S$50,000 from her personal savings and took out loans for the remaining amounts.

The court heard that Sharul had used the money for his renovation, car loan and credit card repayments.

To date, he has repaid the victim S$67.

What happened

Sometime in 2022, Sharul created a fake profile named "Melcolm Tan” on a dating app and matched with the woman in August that year.

They initially communicated over Telegram app, and Sharul told her that he was an oil and bunker trader.

On August 26 that year, Sharul told the victim that she could invest in his shipping imports and make guaranteed returns of 3.5 per cent by January 2023.

He also told her that he would bear any losses and that she would get her money back.

The woman made her first transfer of S$5,000 to him via Paynow electronic transfer on the same day.

After making the first transfer, she noticed that the mobile phone number linked to Paynow belonged to Sharul.

She sent a WhatsApp message to the Paynow number but Sharul managed to maintain the deception by saying that he was "Shan”, an employee of someone named "Melcolm”.

He indicated that he would act as an intermediary between the victim and Melcolm.

The woman believed that and continued corresponding with Shan.

Between August 2022 and March 2023 on six separate occasions, using the persona of Shan, Sharul continued to cheat the woman by telling her that Melcolm needed money for various reasons.

The highest sum he got from her was S$20,000 on October 11, 2022, when he said that Melcolm needed the money to close a deal because his friends had cheated him of S$340,000.

The next highest sum was S$10,000, where he claimed that Melcolm needed to pay customs duties to avoid being arrested.

Other lies that Sharul concocted to deceive the victim were:

• Melcolm had lost his credit card and needed money to pay for his hotel stay in Indonesia and his return flight to Singapore
• Melcolm wanted to transfer some money to Shan and needed the victim to transfer the sum on his behalf
• Melcolm needed to pay his fines so that his lawyer could secure the release of his assets
• Melcolm needed to transfer money to Shan to help with the latter’s loans

From March 2023, the woman tried to meet Melcolm and Shan on various occasions to discuss the repayment of the money, but Sharul repeatedly failed to turn up for these meetings.

The woman grew suspicious and filed a police report on May 29, 2023. Sharul was eventually traced and arrested on November 8 that year.

Seeking between 19 and 23 months’ jail, Deputy Public Prosecutor Andre Chong said that there was a "high degree of premeditation” and "prolonged offending” where Sharul was concerned.

He had "resorted to a series of elaborate pretexts to induce the victim to transfer the funds to him”, where he first gained the victim’s trust with a false persona and maintained the deception through another false persona, DPP Chong added.

For cheating, Sharul could have been sentenced to 10 years’ jail and fined. — TODAY