Mohamed Erzan Taib Zohri v Public Prosecutor

A three-judge High Court heard seven Magistrate's Appeals together, Magistrate's Appeal Nos 9012, 9024, 9041, 9049, 9069, 9082 and 9101 of 2025, all arising from scams-related offences in which offenders opened or handed over bank accounts, or disclosed Singpass credentials, for use by scammers. Six offenders appealed against reformative training or imprisonment as manifestly excessive; in one case (MA 9069) the Prosecution appealed against community-based sentences as manifestly inadequate. Six offenders were under 21 when they offended. Some were charged under the newer provisions introduced in 2023, such as s 55A(1) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act 1992, and others under older provisions, such as s 3(1) of the Computer Misuse Act, s 417 of the Penal Code and s 8(1) of the Computer Misuse Act. A Young Independent Counsel was appointed.

The Sentencing Advisory Panel's Guidelines for Scams-Related Offences, published on 21 August 2024, recommended at paragraph 7(c) that imprisonment or reformative training be the norm even for offenders under 21, and set a six-month starting sentence for an archetypal s 55A(1) offence committed without intention to gain.

1. Whether paragraph 7(c) of the Guidelines, making custody or reformative training the default for young scams offenders, should be followed
2. Whether the Guidelines' sentencing framework for bank account relinquishment under s 55A(1) is appropriate
3. Whether the same approach applies to offences prosecuted under the older provisions, and with what benchmarks
4. What sentence was appropriate in each of the seven appeals

On young offenders, the Guidelines are not binding. Read as creating a default of custody or reformative training, paragraph 7(c) would conflict with the two-stage approach in Public Prosecutor v Koh Wen Jie Boaz [2016] 1 SLR 334, where rehabilitation is presumptively primary. Scams offences vary widely in culpability, Parliament had not excluded community-based sentences, and probation and such sentences carry punitive elements. Deterrence is weighed with all other factors, and courts should call for pre-sentencing reports and consider every rehabilitative option, reserving reformative training for those needing a structured environment or stronger specific deterrence.

On s 55A(1), a benchmark approach suits this narrow offence, but the true archetype involves an offender motivated by gain, so six months applies to that case and motivation by gain is not a separate aggravating factor. The amount flowing through an account counts only so far as it was foreseeable. The same philosophy applies to the older offences, with benchmarks of three to four months for s 3(1) and s 417 relinquishment offences and four months for s 8(1) disclosure.

In MA 9012 the offender, aged 20 to 22 when offending and 24 at sentencing, had escalated into 99 acts of credit card fraud against his adoptive mother, so he was rightly treated as an adult and 14 weeks' imprisonment stood. In MA 9024, MA 9049 and MA 9082, the offenders' progress since their last offences, including national service, family support and study, showed they no longer needed reformative training. In MA 9041 culpability was low and the money in a second account could not be attributed to the offender. In MA 9069 a 16-year-old's combination of day reporting, community service and short detention orders was a calibrated sentence. In MA 9101 the adult offender ignored her suspicions and over $600,000 passed through her account with layering into cryptocurrency, so seven months and two weeks' imprisonment and a $500 fine stood.

The court allowed the appeals in part. It allowed MA 9024, MA 9041, MA 9049 and MA 9082, substituting probation with conditions for reformative training in each, and dismissed MA 9012, MA 9101 and the Prosecution's appeal in MA 9069, leaving those sentences unchanged.