Public Prosecutor v Muhammad Ryan Rosmani

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz
• Judgment Date: 16 September 2024
• Neutral Citation: [2024] SGDC 239
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: District Arrest Case No 902991 of 2024 & 3 others
• Hearing Date: 12 September 2024
• Citation: [2024] SGDC 239
• Year: 2024
• Plaintiff Counsel: Benjamin Low (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Defendant Counsel: Sui Yi Siong and Janerni Mohan (Harry Elias Partnership LLP)
• Published date: 21 September 2024

District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz:Introduction

Following his plea of guilt, Mr Muhammad Ryan Rosmani (“Mr Ryan”) has been convicted of two counts of engaging in a conspiracy to cheat two financial institutions, an offence under s 417 read with s 109 of the Penal Code 1871.¹ He also consents to two charges under s 3(1) read with s 12 of the Computer Misuse Act 1993, being taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing.² These offences pertain to Mr Ryan handing his bank accounts’ access code, personal identification number and one-time password to unknown persons thereby facilitating their unauthorised access to banking services. It now falls upon this court to impose a condign sentence.

I preface my decision on sentence by addressing several points raised in the Mitigation Plea that warrant a response to set in context what sentencing in this case responds to and relatedly, what it seeks to achieve.

There is Public Interest in Deterring Cheating Offences that Facilitate Organised Crime

Cheating offences under s 417 of the Penal Code encompass a wide spectrum of offending. In this case, the court is concerned with actions that deliberately sought to circumvent safeguards in the banking system and ultimately resulted in the deception of two financial institutions. The act of handing over control of one’s bank account to a third party is a key cog in the criminal activities of organised crime syndicates. Sentencing here is about dealing with offenders who help facilitate the activities of such syndicates by giving them access to the legitimate banking system, thereby furthering their criminal enterprise.

Where the usurped bank account is then used to funnel illicit proceeds of crime, the egregiousness of the conduct must necessarily be assessed in the context of the burgeoning number of scams-related offences worldwide. I shall not delve into the figures as these are publicly available, however it suffices to highlight that the number of reported scam cases has increased by more than seven-fold, while the amounts lost to scams have quadrupled.³

These sobering figures underscore the undeniable growing public interest in suppressing scams-related offences. In this connection, the courts play a pivotal role in responding to the urgent need to effectively deter such offences. The penal sanctions imposed on those who, in any capacity, facilitate and fuel these scams must be sufficiently robust to reflect the seriousness of the crime and curb the alarming ease with which many are drawn into committing these offences.

The Factors in the Sentencing Advisory Panel’s Guidelines for Scams-Related Offences are Broadly Relevant

This brings me to the next issue that arises in the Mitigation Plea, and that is the submission that Mr Ryan’s offences fall outside the scope of the Sentencing Advisory Panel’s Guidelines for Scams-Related Offences (“the Guidelines”).⁴ I would observe that while the Guidelines are not expressly applicable to offences under s 417 of the Penal Code, the suite of offence and offender specific factors distilled therein,⁵ would, with the appropriate modifications, clearly inform the court’s assessment of (i) the harm engendered by a s 417 offence involving an offender who has deceitfully procured and thereafter relinquished a bank account that is used to funnel scam proceeds, and (ii) the offender’s culpability for the same. It is to this extent, that these factors are relevant to sentencing in the present case.

In a similar vein, it would be remiss for the court to disregard the broad sentencing principles enunciated in the Guidelines,⁶ that as a matter of logic, are equally germane to s 417 offences of the nature under consideration.

In adopting this approach, I am doing no more than responding to the Defence’s call for the court to take into account the nature of the charges and the relevant facts and circumstances of this case.⁷ To be abundantly clear, I am not sentencing Mr Ryan as though he were convicted of the new scams-related offences that only came into force in February 2024.⁸ That is not the intent of the court, nor the approach that I have adopted. Though for completeness, I should highlight that the s 417 charges Mr Ryan has been convicted of, are punishable with a fine and/or up to 3 years’ imprisonment, which accords with the prescribed punishment for an offence under s 55A(1)(a) read with s 55A(1)(b)(ii) punishable under s 55A(5) of the CDSA.⁹

The Applicable Sentencing Factors

I now turn to consider the interplay between the facts of this case and the relevant sentencing factors.

Offence-specific factors going towards harm

In assessing harm, the following factors inform sentencing.

Foremost, the offences involve the deliberate deception of a financial institution, which is aggravating as such conduct, if left unchecked has the potential to erode the integrity of, and confidence in, Singapore’s financial infrastructure: Idya Nurhazlyn bte Ahmad Khir v Public Prosecutor and another appeal [2013] SGHC 238 at [48] to [49].

Second, I cannot ignore the significant harm that has flowed from Mr Ryan’s offences. The Defence’s attempt to confine the court’s assessment to merely the reputational harm suffered by the victim banks,¹⁰ is erroneous. It bears repeating that harm is a measure of the injury which has been caused to society by the commission of the offence¹¹ and as the High Court cautioned in Newton, David Christopher v Public Prosecutor [2023] SGHC 266 at [64], the court should look at all the surrounding facts that are relevant and proved, to determine “the real nature of the harm caused” even when the harm in question is plainly not an element of the proceeded charge.

In the present case, for the purpose of sentencing, this is sufficiently capacious to encompass the harm flowing from the subsequent illicit use of the two bank accounts opened by Mr Ryan, to funnel scam proceeds of more than $70,000 in a short span of time. The Defence’s argument that “no appreciable harm was actually inflicted”¹² is therefore baseless and I reject any characterisation of Mr Ryan’s offences as having caused little or low harm.¹³

Offence-specific factors going towards culpability

In assessing...