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Monday, Oct 22, 2012
FOR five months earlier this year, teenager "Charlene" worked from 3pm to 9pm every day.
Her job? To deposit and withdraw money from ATMs.
The 18-year-old was paid $50 a day for this. The only problem was that the transactions were illegal. She was working as a runner for an illegal moneylender.
She was arrested in May and is now awaiting sentencing.
She is not the only teenager who has become entangled in the shady world of illegal loan-sharking. Police statistics show that last year, 336 youths aged 19 and below were arrested for loan-sharking and harassment activities, a hefty jump compared to 156 youths in 2010.
In 2009, 155 youths were caught and there were only 63 youths arrested in 2008.
In the first half of this year, 1,033 people were arrested for these activities, of which 109 were aged 19 and below.
Criminal lawyer Josephus Tan, who has advised some of these teenage offenders, said that in the past, runners tended to be gambling addicts and people with debts, and they were also older.
"It is worrying to see such a sharp rise in cases involving youth, especially when these youths are committing the offences just to earn quick pocket money," he said.
Cases that have been heard in court recently shed light on these young offenders.
Many were lured by the easy money of working for a loan shark, the courts heard.
For instance, Charlene - who cannot be identified by her real name as she has not been sentenced - earned about $6,000 in the five months she was involved in loan-sharking.
She was introduced to it by a friend who was working as a runner. She had dropped out of Secondary 1 after attending only three days of school.
She decided to be a runner
as she was jobless, and thought that the job was straightforward as it involved just banking transactions.
"The loan shark would call me at 3pm sharp every day to instruct me on which bank accounts he wanted me to withdraw money from and then deposit the money into," she said.
On Oct 5, she was convicted of one charge of assisting an unlicensed moneylender. Three more charges will be taken into consideration when she is sentenced on Nov 5.
Under the Moneylenders Act, she can be fined between $30,000 and $300,000 and face a jail term of up to four years.
The court has called for a probation report on her, which means she might not be jailed
A former loan shark told The Straits Times that the illegal moneylending world is experiencing a shortage of runners.
"The tough laws have made it hard for loan sharks to recruit runners," he said, pointing to how the Moneylenders Act relating to loan sharks was further tightened in 2010.
Against this backdrop, teenagers are easy bait, and school dropouts and students from lower educational streams are often targeted, he said.
"Young people are easily lured by the idea of easy money. They are also more ignorant of the law and the stiff punishment when caught," said the former loan shark.
Most are roped in to do ATM transactions and to harass debtors at their homes, such as scribbling on their walls.
Lawyer Mr Tan, who is from Patrick Tan LLC, said that in the past one year alone, he has given advice to more than 30 such cases at various legal clinics, a big jump from previous years.
He said most of the teens are not aware that some of the activities that loan sharks get them to do - such as banking money - are illegal.
Tackling the problem of teenagers in moneylending, he said, will require education and awareness.
"I believe there are no bad dogs, only bad owners," he said.
"It is the duty of the adults to educate our future generation."
