Overview
- Parliament approved the Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill on Nov. 4, introducing mandatory caning bands for scammers and discretionary caning for facilitators.
- Courts can impose six to 24 strokes on scammers, syndicate members and recruiters, while money mules and other facilitators face up to 12 strokes at the court’s discretion, with discretionary caning extended to other cheating offences.
- The government cited about 190,000 scam cases since 2020 with reported losses of roughly $3.7–$3.88 billion, noting scams now account for about 60% of reported crimes.
- The law clarifies that creating intimate images without consent, including AI-generated or synthetic depictions and images purportedly of minors, is an offence, and it raises the minor threshold for obscene-material rules to under 18.
- Penalties rise for circulating obscene material to 10 or more people to a maximum two years’ jail, or four years if it involves someone under 18, with a new offence targeting administrators who run locations that host such content.