Singapore has disclosed plans to impose mandatory caning on convicted online scammers, with offenders facing at least six strokes, as the government intensified crackdown on cybercrime syndicates following record scam losses.
Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs, Sim Ann, told parliament on Tuesday that Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy lost over $2.8 billion to scams between 2020 and the first half of 2025.
Sim stressed that during that period, around 190,000 scam cases were reported.
“We will introduce mandatory caning for scammers,” Sim announced as lawmakers debated amendments to Singapore’s criminal code.
“Offenders who commit scams, defined as cheating mainly through remote communication, will be punished with at least six strokes of the cane.”
She said the new measures would also target syndicate members and recruiters, who “mobilise significant resources to conduct and profit from scams” and therefore bear the highest level of culpability.
Under the proposed law, members of scam syndicates and those who recruit others would face mandatory caning of at least six strokes, while accomplices such as ‘money mules’ — who provide bank accounts or SIM cards to scammers — could face up to 12 strokes.
Singapore has intensified its anti-scam efforts in recent years, including public awareness campaigns, a national hotline, and the launch of the ScamShield app in 2020, which helps users identify suspicious calls and messages.
The growing threat of cyber scams has touched all levels of society — even former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once admitted to being scammed after an online order failed to arrive.
Meanwhile, Singaporean police recently seized over $115 million in assets linked to British-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, accused of operating forced-labour scam centres in Cambodia.
United States Justice Department has described his organisation as one of Asia’s largest transnational criminal networks.
