Lee Si Hong, a year-old Singaporean, pleaded guilty on Monday Oct 7 to seven charges including living on prostitution earnings, procuring women for the purpose of prostitution and managing a brothel. The court heard that Lee, a freelance insurance agent at the time, got to know a person known only as "Boss" in For about two years and five months from April , Lee's role in the syndicate included liaising with the prostitutes before they arrived in Singapore and making travel arrangements for them.
When the sex workers arrived in Singapore, he briefed them on their working arrangement and asked them for sexy photographs of themselves. He also advertised their sexual services on online platform Sammyboy Forum under the thread title "BangkokGems". Lee managed the main business operation line, handling clients, arranging for units to be rented for use as a brothel, as well as managing three brothels assigned to him by ensuring condoms and lubricants were replenished.
He also collected prostitution earnings daily. On the night of Sep 19, , simultaneous police raids were conducted at three places, and Lee was arrested along with several sex workers. Lee admitted to managing a group of Thai prostitutes, and a follow-up raid of his vehicle and home uncovered several phones, a laptop and notebooks. Subsequent investigations revealed that a Filipino woman had approached Lee saying she wanted to work for the syndicate, while posing as a foreign domestic worker in Singapore.
Lee also pleaded guilty under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act to abetting this woman to work without a valid work pass. There was a "significant degree of scale and sophistication in this enterprise", said the prosecutor, with at least nine Thai prostitutes involved.
On top of this, Lee also promoted the sex workers' services on platforms to establish the enterprise's presence and reach a larger target audience. The running of the three brothels "clearly encroached into residential areas", said the prosecutor, and there is a transnational element in this case as the prostitutes were all "specifically procured from Thailand".
