A 43-year-old man will be charged today (10 September) for public nuisance after behaving violently in a hospital ward.

The Singapore Police Force confirmed that they received a call for help yesterday (9 September 2022) at about 9.20pm, at a hospital.

The 43-year-old man had allegedly punched and used vulgarities on the nurses and security officers at the hospital ward, according to preliminary investigations.

He is set to be charged in court today (10 September).

Potential penalties

According to Chapter 322 of the penal code, anyone who performs an act that causes hurt to a person is guilty of Voluntarily Causing Grievous Hurt.

Upon conviction, offenders could face imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3 years, and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

Persons found guilty of causing hurt to security officers, face a jail term of up to 5 years and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

Persons found guilty of intentionally causing harassment to public service workers face a jail term of up to 12 months and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

54-year-old Dmitriy Shport, a Singapore permanent resident from Russia, was sentenced to 4 months imprisonment on Friday after pleading guilty to one charge of forgery for cheating.

He had forged an Option to Purchase (OTP) to cheat a victim into believing that he sold his property in Deccember 2021 when the sale was actually made on April 2017.

He used the money that he earned from the 2017 sale of the property to pay off his other debts, and also to finance his company.

What happened?

Shport wanted to buy private property in Singapore in early 2015 and approached his friend, Ms Irina Sergeva, who gave him a loan of $1.71 million.

Shport was supposed to repay the money to her by 31 March 2016 at an interest rate of 8% per year, according to their loan agreement.

On 1 April 20126, both of them then agreed to extend the repayment date to 31 December 2018, but Shport failed to make any payment to Irina by the end of 2021.

Shport deceived Irina on 21 December 2021 into believing that he had just sold the property and could now repay her the money.

He did this to stop her from taking action against him for his failure to repay the loan.

Shport sent Irina screenshots of an OTP exercising the sale of the property for $2.4 million in an attempt to convince her that the sale was legitimate.

He had altered the dates in the original OTP for the condominium unit’s sale back in 2017, and sent the edited document to Irina.

Irina eventually found out that the sale took place in 2017 and not in 2021 as Shport claimed, and a police report was then made.

Shport was then arrested on 25 July earlier this year, and his loan has still not been repaid.

65-year-old Young Tat Ong, pleaded guilty on Thursday to one charge of engaging in a conspiracy to use counterfeit currency as real money.

He had agreed to help a Vietnamese man exchange Singapore $10,000 notes for smaller denominations, in exchange for a commission.

He suspected that the notes from the man, who claimed to be a high-ranking government official, were fake, but still tried to deposit three of the notes into his corporate bank account.

A suitability report to assess whether Young is suitable for preventive detention was called by the judge, and is usually given to re-offenders.

Young had been convicted 7 times since he was 16 years old for crimes such as cheating and forgery.

What happened

Young met the Vietnamese man Dinh Dai Quang through an online acquaintance, and the latter told him that he was a Vietnamese government official with access to Singapore $10,000 notes that belonged to his government, and was being stored in a warehouse.

Dinh told Young that the notes were “payments” from the Singapore Government to Vietnam, asking him to help exchange the money for smaller denominations and promised to pay him $4,000 for each $10,000 note that he changed as commission.

Young suspected the notes were fake because the colours of the notes that Dinh sent him on Whatsapp were different from the genuine $10,000 notes that he had seen before.

The two then met up on 21 March earlier this year at Changi Airport and Dinh passed Young 2 pieces of the $10,000 notes.

Young noticed that the notes had appeared “dull” but still brought them home, before heading to a DBS bank outlet the next day and trying to deposit $31,000 of 3 fake $10,000 notes and a genuine $1,000 note.

The bank teller sensed that something was wrong because the $10,000 notes felt different from the genuine ones, and she then informed her superiors to inspect the notes.

A branch service manager then found that the texture on the fake notes were different, with the security thread lines being blue instead of silver.

The watermark images of Yusof Ishak was also not distinct, and the serial number of the fake notes were also golden brown instead of brown and black.

The police were then alerted and the two men were then arrested on the spot.

61-year-old Leo Norman Chee Wei Kiong, a former director with the Housing Development Board (HDB), was sentenced to 2 weeks imprisonment on Friday and fined $31,600.

Chee, who was a civil servant for more than 35 years, had pleaded guilty to 6 charges, including filming obscene videos and possessing the obscene videos.

8 other charges were considered during his sentencing.

Background

Chee was a former housing finance director at HDB, and he was in a male locker room of an unspecified Safra clubhouse back in April 2012 when he took two photos of a man in underwear.

In January 2013, Chee was in a male locker room again and took 5 photos of another man who was changing his clothes and had his genitals exposed at the time.

Chee then took a 1-minute long video in December 2017, of a man named “Billy” who was not wearing any clothes at all at Chee’s home.

In December 2018, Chee took a 25-second video of another man who was not wearing any clothes at a locker room at Mount Faber Safra.

Chee then took another video of Billy without any clothes on 25 September 2019.

Chee was at a supermarket at Kallang Bahru when he saw a man that he found attractive, and took a video of him, before being caught by the man, with a commotion then ensuing and the police being alerted by an employee of the supermarket.

Chee then agreed to delete the video after admitting to filming him, and when the man checked Chee’s phone to make sure the video was deleted, he noticed several obscene videos of other men without clothes.

He later informed the police about what he saw and the police then seized Chee’s device, which was later found to have 146 obscene videos.

Chee admitted to using his mobile phone to film and take photos of men that he found attractive at public places such as gyms and changing rooms.

Jolovan Wham Kwok Han, a 42-year-old activist, was convicted back in January this year for an unlawful assembly at the main entrance of the former State Courts building on 13 December 2018 at around 9am.

The State Courts is a Prohibited Area under the Public Order Act, with strict security protocols in place.

His appeal was dismissed by the High Court and he chose to serve 15-day imprisonment in lieu of paying a $3,000 fine on Friday.

Recap

Jolovan Wham was attending a court hearing in 13 December 2018 for a criminal defamation case involving Terry Xu, the editor of The Online Citizen (TOC) and De Costa Agustin, a contributor of TOC.

Wham stood on the steps outside the building, holding on to a piece of paper with the worlds “Drop the charges against Terry Xu and Daniel De Costa” on it.

CCTV footage was showed in the courtroom showing Wham holding up the sign for about 15 seconds while being photographed.

Two passers-by was also passing by at the time while he was holding the sign but didn’t pay attention to it.

Wham then kept the sign in his bag and entered the building; he then posted a public photo of it on his social media accounts.

The photo was then reposted onto a forum on HardwareZone by a netizen and a police report was then anonymously made by a member of the public, against the post.