SINGAPORE: A 27-year-old sales engineer found with 280 obscene films and who planned to distribute them was jailed for six months on Thursday (Oct 5).

Joel Chew Wei Chen was convicted of one charge under the Films Act last month.



Chew was a member of at least three online forums dedicated to obscene content, and had uploaded and exchanged hundreds of films of unsuspecting women and girls caught using the toilet or in changing rooms in various states of undress before he was caught, the court heard.

Hundreds of victims were filmed using hidden cameras installed all over Singapore, in public toilets, cafes, churches, schools, offices and changing rooms.

This is the first prosecution of its kind involving members of a large online community dedicated to the distribution of explicit films of women and girls taken in Singapore, deputy public prosecutor Tang Shangjun had told the court.

Though Chew did not actually make the films, he actively traded in them, the prosecutor said.



The court heard that it is close to impossible to remove the videos from circulation, given that Chew traded them with hundreds of forum members, who probably also traded the videos with others.

The faces and private parts of many victims are clearly visible in the videos, and it would be “intensely humiliating” if a victim one day finds a compromising video of herself on the Internet, the prosecutor said.

The police had been alerted by the Ministry of Education about explicit videos of schoolgirls making the rounds on forum Sammyboy. An investigation led the police to Ali V P Mohamed, who had started an online group called SG Horizon Club to collect as well as facilitate the distribution of obscene films.

The police identified Chew based on information from Ali, who had divulged Chew’s username. He was arrested in November 2016, and four hard drives containing 775 films were seized, 280 of which were later found to be obscene.

Four others – including Ali – have been arrested in connection with the case. Chew is the first of the group to be dealt with.

He could have been jailed for up to two years and fined S$2,000 per film, up to S$80,000.