Teenager pleads guilty to loanshark harassment

[Katana]

Teenager pleads guilty to loanshark harassment
By 938LIVE | Posted: 19 November 2009 1600 hrs
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SINGAPORE: A 17-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to eight charges of loanshark harassment. The court heard on Thursday that the boy committed the harassment acts between August 13 and 17 this year.

His crime spree started at Block 853, Woodlands Street 83. He and an accomplice vandalised a wall at a staircase landing with black ink, and splashed a unit with black paint.

They repeated the act at four other flats that day in different parts of Singapore, including Tampines and Commonwealth.

On August 17, a resident who had entered a lift with them at Block 16, Marsiling Lane, spotted the paint in the boy's unzipped bag. He asked the pair if they were loanshark harassers.

They denied and tried to flee, but the resident managed to detain them and hand them over to the police.

Police officers found six bags of paint, two markers and a street directory on the pair. They also admitted that they were working for an unlicensed moneylender known as "Sunny", claiming that they were given S$40 for every unit harassed.

The 17-year-old also pleaded guilty to being in an unlawful assembly with four others, with the common intention to hurt a secondary school student. They beat up the student at Block 840, Tampines Street 82, on May 4 this year. The victim suffered bruises on his face.

The scuffle had broken out after one of the attackers accused the student of snatching away his girlfriend.

The boy originally faced 16 different charges, but they were reduced to nine, with seven taken into consideration. The other parties involved in these cases will be dealt with separately.

This case will be mentioned again on December 10. For loanshark harassment, the boy could be jailed a maximum of three years and fined up to S$40,000 for each charge.

For being in an unlawful assembly, he could be jailed up to two years and fined.


- 938LIVE/so