Cheating and enforcement of the law

I read a news report that a person was sent to jail for pretending to be the owner of a travel agency operating a popular website and collecting money for a package tour from the victim. This is the offence of cheating.

Cheating is a crime that is punishable by a jail sentence. It involves misrepresentation (e.g. pretending to be somebody else) and collecting money from a victim. Actually, the crime is more broadly defining as taking any property (and not just money) from the victim.

It is easy to prove misrepresentation when the offender pretends to be somebody else. But there are other forms of misrepresentation, such as misrepresenting the value of a product that is sold (e.g. selling gold bar, wine or land plots at inflated prices) and giving a unjustified projection of their further appreciation in value.

It is the duty of the government, through the police department, to enforce the law in the case of criminal offences. They have to receive the complaints and investigate it to see if an offence has been committed. I do not expect the police to spend too much time for the investigation, especially if the information is sketchy or unreliable. But if the information is sufficient or the complaint is made by several victims, the police should investigate and treat it as a matter of public interest.

There is the excuse that the police does not have sufficient resources and there are too many cases to follow up. The solution is to recruit more police officers and investigators.  Even if it is difficult to gather sufficient evidence to prosecute the offenders, the policy should still investigate the complaint, as the investigation would deter the offenders from continuing their activities.

In recent years, there were heating cases that has involved many people. They were not investigated due to lack of resources. The victims were asked to get a lawyer to take a civil case. I hope that the police department and the ministry of home affairs will review their current stand on this type of cases.

Tan Kin Lian