Male ex-school teacher pretends to be different persons online to befriend teenagers, send them obscene content
- Tay Tong Wei chatted online with teenagers as young as 15 while using fake social media accounts
- A teacher at a secondary school at the time, he prompted them to talk about sexual topics
- He sent explicit images or videos to the victims with some sending him similar images of their own
- Tay pleaded guilty to distributing obscene materials and is due for sentencing end of October
BY
TAUFIQ ZALIZAN
Published October 5, 2023Updated October 6, 2023
SINGAPORE — Using fake identities on social media, a secondary school teacher chatted with some teenagers on sexual matters and coaxed a few of them into sending intimate images of themselves to him.
Others even accepted his offer to buy them sex toys for their usage.
On Thursday, Tay Tong Wei, now 35 and working as a private tutor, pleaded guilty to seven counts of distributing obscene materials, with 39 similar charges and one count of possession of obscene films to be taken into consideration for sentencing.The names of the victims, who were all teenagers when he began befriending them online, cannot be published to protect their identities.
CHATTING WITH ‘JASMIN’, ‘MIKEY COOL’
Sometime in 2013 and 2014, Tay decided to set up fake social media profiles in the hope of getting strangers to share their sexual experiences with him.
He created a female profile called “Jasmin Jasmin” or Jasmin, on Facebook, as well as a male profile called “Mikey Cool” or Mike on Facebook and messaging application Snapchat.
Tay would then use these personas to chat up six teenagers — three males and three females — steering the conversations to turn sexual in nature.
In November 2015, for instance, he used the Facebook account of Jasmin and befriended his first victim who was 17 years old — labelled as V1 in court documents.
Pretending to be a 17-year-old student, Tay started broaching sexual topics with her and the girl “grew comfortable” discussing such matters as well, thinking that she was talking to a female peer, court documents stated.
That same year, Tay used his Jasmin persona to introduce V1 to “Mike”, his other fake persona. The conversations between Mike and V1 became sexual in nature over time. At one point, Mike proposed buying V1 a sex toy for her use and she agreed to it.
From 2015 to early February in 2019, Tay would send V1 various photos and videos of people engaging in sexual acts through the two fake accounts.
This included one incident when Tay pretended that a video was portraying Jasmin engaging in a sexual act, and persuaded V1 to send a video of herself engaging in a sexual act in return, to which the victim eventually complied. V1 was 19 at the time.The teenager made a police report on Feb 5 in 2019 stating that she had exchanged videos of a sexual nature with Jasmin, though court documents did not state what prompted her to do so.
The police later identified Tay and after seizing his laptop and mobile phone, a forensic check discovered the existence of other victims besides V1.
He befriended them when they were as young as 15 years old and chatted with them using the fake accounts until some of them turned 20.
For one of the victims, he pretended that “Jasmin” was a younger girl seeking advice on sexual topics and asked the victim, a female, to exchange nude photographs with Jasmin.
He also used Jasmin’s account to befriend a 15-year-old boy and sent him images of women engaging in sexual acts, prompting the boy to share what sexual acts he would like to do to Jasmin.
Tay is scheduled to return to court for mitigation and sentencing on Oct 30.
For each count of transmitting obscene materials, he can be fine or jailed for up to three months, or both.
