Singapore provides a healthy, business-friendly environment to make money. Here's how:

Enter Hardwarezone forum user Verynormalguy.

He described how an entirely legitimate business took place at Jurong Point recently:

(I) was at jurong point for lunch on 24 Oct. Near the L1 exit leading to boon lay MRT, one gal approach me with the standard white donation bag with slit in front. asking if I would like to donate to needy.

He found it rather strange, but offered to give away S$2 anyway. An offer which the girl tried to beat up.

i thought strange why one solo girl asking donation on a monday noon. but anyway fish out a $2 ready to drop it in. I think she sensed my generosity, she pulled away the bag slightly and flipped out a clipboard, showed me photos of handicap and old people, say these are the people they are helping. ask me can donate $10 and write down on a form. the form already got 10+ people donated $10 each. Also, if I wanted to help them more, can buy items made by them, opening her bag to show me some handcraft stuff which i cannot recall is what.

This tipped off Verynormalguy, who proceeded to ask for proof of the charity she was soliciting donations for.

Now, this is where it gets weird.

While the girl couldn't provide an actual ID, she provided a letter with a name printed on top.

Verynormalguy next asked for some time to research this entity, which the girl brushed off, but he was extremely serious about it.

I told her I do not mind donating but give me some time do some research (on the charity), she kind of laughed softly, thinking i was giving an excuse to siam. but i really went one corner to google and saw it was a sole proprietor with a HDB flat as registered address.... wth..... dun look right.

He immediately called the police, and while waiting for them to arrive, worked out that the girl and her partner, a tall man with dyed hair, had collected hundreds of dollars with their aforementioned tactics.

I must say they managed to get quite a number of people to donate. When the girl showed me the form, there was already 10+ names, means collected at least $100+, not counting what was dropped into the bag. Assuming the guy got the same amount, they must have collected more than $300.

Ironclad

The next part, however, showed just how simple the operation was.

It turned out, the police couldn't do anything about the two of them, because they weren't technically doing anything wrong.

How? You might ask.

Here's how.

1. The business would register as a sole proprietorship and named something charitable (e.g. Helping Hands For Helping Hans, Goodwill Do-gooders Will Do Good).

2. The letter would display the charitable name in an extremely prominent position to inform the public about the goodness of it. The letter would also contain typical charity buzzwords.

3. If/ When the police arrives, they can prove they are a private company, selling products. And since there are no clear identifiers (even the charity bag was blank and without logo), there would usually be one outcome.

4. The police would therefore just issue them a warning to not sell things in public places without permit.

Why is this such a big deal?

If they are not technically doing anything illegal, then what is the problem?

Verynormalguy had an extremely eloquent explanation for why this is absurd.

To me, when it comes to earning money illegally. you can rob a bank, murder for money or sell drugs for all i care. but one do not abuse or anyhow say "for charity" when it is not. it will weaken the name and position of real charities that are doing very good work.

Spot on.

Top image from Hardware Zone

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