Public Prosecutor v Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Yong Pung How CJ
• Judgment Date: 19 September 2003
• Neutral Citation: [2003] SGHC 213
• Date: 19 September 2003
• Subject Matter: Appropriate length of preventive detention,Preventive detention,Sentencing,Forms of punishment,Criminal Procedure and Sentencing
• Docket Number: Magistrate's Appeal No 115 of 2003
• Published date: 16 October 2003
• Defendant Counsel: Respondent/appellant in person
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Plaintiff Counsel: Christopher Ong Siu Jin (Deputy Public Prosecutor)

1 The respondent Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh claimed trial in the district court to 765 charges of cheating under s 420 of the Penal Code (Cap 224). Subsequently, he pleaded guilty to five charges. The remaining charges were taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing. The district judge sentenced him to 12 years’ preventive detention. The Public Prosecutor appealed against the sentence. The respondent cross-appealed. I dismissed the cross-appeal. I allowed the Public Prosecutor’s appeal, and enhanced the sentence to 20 years’ preventive detention. I now give my reasons.

Background

2 I set out here the first of the five charges to which the respondent pleaded guilty. The other charges, including the 760 charges taken into consideration, differed only in terms of the respective particulars of the date of the offence, the identity of the victim and the amount of money involved.

You, Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh, Male/41 yrs old, NRIC No S1570345H are charged that on the 19 June 1999 [sic], M/s Infoseek Communications (S) Pte Ltd located at No 10 Anson Road #34-12, International Plaza, Singapore, did cheat United Overseas Bank (UOB) Card Centre by deceiving UOB Card Centre into believing that one Neo Cheng Sim, holder of a credit card bearing number: 4541 8220 0052 5845 had made IDD calls worth S$1648.92, which you knew to be untrue and by such manner of deception, you dishonestly induced UOB Card Centre to deliver the said amount to M/S Infoseek Communications (S) Pte Ltd, to wit, by crediting the said amount to the bank account of M/s Infoseek Communications (S) Pte Ltd held with UOB Coleman Street Branch and you have thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 420 of the Penal Code, Chapter 224.

Between June and early July 1999, the respondent fraudulently processed 765 fictitious credit card transactions. The total amount involved was $554,557.05, or just over half a million dollars.

3 The circumstances in which the present offences took place were set out in the statement of facts, to which the respondent pleaded guilty without qualification. The respondent was a director of Infoseek Communications (S) Pte Ltd (‘Infoseek’). Under an August 1998 merchant agreement with United Overseas Bank (‘UOB’), Infoseek offered international ‘call back’ services to UOB customers, who could pay for those services via three modes of payment. One mode was post-payment credit card billing. This involved the respondent keying the particulars of each transaction into an electronic draft capture terminal provided by UOB. Then, UOB Card Centre would credit the billed amount into Infoseek’s UOB bank account.

4 From April 1999, a glitch in Infoseek’s computerized billing system caused it to begin overcharging customers. The respondent managed to correct this, but saw in it an opportunity to generate more money for Infoseek. After correcting the glitch, the respondent began to charge his customers for call back services they never used. He would either duplicate individual customers’ calls to inflate total usage, or charge for the same call twice.

5 The unusually high volume of business transacted by Infoseek around June 1999 prompted UOB to begin investigations. In the first week of July 1999, UOB froze $116,675.43 from Infoseek’s bank account. On 6 July 1999, the respondent left for India. He was arrested there on 27 February 2001. On 24 December 2002, he was extradited to Singapore.

6 The respondent was represented by counsel below. He claimed trial to all 765 charges. On the first day of trial, however, he elected to plead guilty to five charges, and consented to have the other charges taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing. The district judge called for a pre-sentencing preventive detention report. He then adjourned the matter for two weeks.

7 One week before the respondent was due to be sentenced, he filed an ‘application’ to retract his plea. The basis of this ‘application’ was that the investigating officer and the DPP having charge of his case had ‘cowed and deceived’ him into pleading guilty. On the day of sentencing, the respondent filed a ‘supplementary application’ further alleging that undertakings to accord him due process and a fair hearing, which undertakings were purportedly given by the Singapore government to secure his extradition from India, had not been honoured.

8 The district judge disallowed the respondent’s applications. He then heard the respondent’s plea in mitigation, and the prosecution’s submissions on sentence.

The decision below

9 The district judge did not consider that any of the points raised by the respondent’s counsel were valid mitigating factors. Indeed, he found some of counsel’s submissions to be ‘utterly disingenuous.’ For example, counsel submitted that this was really just a case of overcharging, that the respondent had made restitution of $116,000 and was prepared to surrender $40,000 from his personal UOB account as further restitution. The district judge noted that the $116,000 was, in fact, the money frozen by UOB. Also, the district judge was of the opinion that the respondent’s offer to surrender a further $40,000 was calculated to mislead the court. It was established that the respondent had withdrawn over $40,000 from his personal account just days before UOB began investigations so that, at the time of sentencing, the account contained only $300.

10 The district judge found that the respondent was a suitable candidate for preventive detention. Taking into account the respondent’s lengthy list of antecedents and the circumstances of the present offending, the district judge formed the opinion that the respondent was ‘an incorrigible recidivist too recalcitrant for reformation.’ The district judge found the respondent’s demonstrated lack of remorse to be particularly disturbing. He then sentenced the respondent to preventive detention for a term of 12 years.

The appeals against sentence

The prosecution’s appeal

11 The basis of the prosecution’s appeal was that the sentence was manifestly inadequate. The essence of the prosecution’s arguments was that the district judge had erred in failing to give due weight to the aggravating factors present in this case. As such, he had failed to mete out a term of preventive detention of sufficient length to ensure that the public would be protected from the respondent.

12 The prosecution drew parallels between this case and that of PP v Wong Wing Hung [1999] 4 SLR 329, in which I had sentenced the accused to the maximum term of 20 years’ preventive detention. The prosecution submitted that, like the accused in Wong Wing Hung, the respondent was still relatively young (41 at the time of this appeal), having begun his criminal career at 21. He also had a long and varied series of previous convictions.

The respondent’s appeal

13 The respondent appeared in person before me. Despite this being an appeal against sentence, the respondent’s written grounds of appeal ran the gamut. Very few of his grounds were relevant to the issue of sentencing. In court, he repeated what, in my view, were scandalous and baseless allegations that the prosecution had ‘cleverly...