It said police in China and Singapore had discovered the gang in March and that the gang used WeChat and other messaging apps to trick more than a hundred mainland Chinese women into prostitution in Singapore.
Prostitution is technically legal in Singapore in government-approved red light districts, but is heavily regulated and policed. The city state forbids maintaining a brothel, soliciting for sex in public, advertising sex work online, pimping and recruiting women for sex work.
Singaporean police have cracked down on illegal sex workers in the past, but women are still arriving from places such as Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and China, Ho said. During the investigation, Chinese police identified the main alleged organisers of the trafficking ring as two year-old men, surnamed Zhou and Zhu, from the city of Lianyungang in Jiangsu province, eastern China. Chinese and Singaporean police arrested the suspects on November 22 in a joint raid in both countries, Chinese police said.
Fourteen suspected gang members, including the two main alleged organisers, were arrested in Singapore, where the suspected trafficking victims were also found. Sixteen suspected gang members were arrested in China. According to the investigators, gang members cooperated with criminals in Singapore to lure the women there with promises of highly paid professional work, and forged working visa application documents.
The gang then illegally seized profits from prostitution, the police said. The ministry advised the public to stay vigilant regarding suspicious offers of highly paid work overseas and be aware of possible fraud. In April, Chinese police broke up another alleged international prostitution ring organised via WeChat and operating in mainland China and Malaysia, arresting suspects in total.
