The Accused set up a social escort agency, ‘SG Freelancers’, to offer the sexual services of women under his employ. The enterprise was essentially a one-man operation. In order to recruit women to work for the agency, the Accused adopted the moniker of ‘Angel Tan’ and passed himself off as a social escort working for the agency.

Using Angel Tan’s Facebook account, he would send a template message offering a high income freelance job to random women on Facebook and other social media platforms. The Accused would then inform interested women that the job entailed, inter alia, providing sexual services. Interested parties were asked to submit a sexually explicit questionnaire detailing their particulars and the sexual services they were willing to provide, together with photographs of themselves (fully clothed / in lingerie).

Upon receiving the questionnaire and photographs, the Accused arranged to interview the women at his residence, a HDB apartment. At the interview, the Accused would introduce himself as a handler of ‘SG Freelancers’ and brief the women on the work processes and the expected remuneration. He explained that whilst he would not receive a commission for the first client, he expected a 5 to 50% commission for subsequent clients. The women were also told that they would earn less money if they did not provide sexual services.

If the women were agreeable, the Accused would then conduct a ‘verification’ process. This began with the women stripping fully for the Accused to inspect the condition of their bodies. Thereafter, the women were asked to provide the Accused with the service(s) they were willing to provide clients. The women would thus engage in sexual intercourse with the Accused, fellate him or masturbate him. Some of the women who did not perform satisfactorily, or were menstruating, were told to return for a further verification session. If the women were still keen on working for the agency after completing each of the steps detailed above, the Accused would then create an online profile for them on ‘Craigslist’/‘Locanto’ to advertise their services.

In the course of investigations, evidence was obtained from 34 women who had responded to the Accused’s advertisements. One of these women was a minor who was 16 years old, and the subject of the sole charge under the Prevention of Human Trafficking Act 2014. The Accused operated ‘SG Freelancers’ for a period of 2 ½ years, between early 2013 and October 2015. In this time, he only managed to secure 5 clients for the women he engaged. He did not receive any commission from the women as none of them had serviced more than one client.