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Turah Raju Subramaniam, 39, pleaded guilty to assisting another person to retain the benefits of criminal conduct, Channel News Asia reported.

A friend had introduced him to what were pitched as jobs in Singapore, and once he agreed he was added to a Telegram group that fed him instructions, the court heard.

The victim, a 54-year-old Singaporean woman, took a call from someone posing as a bank officer who said she was tied to fraudulent transactions, then was transferred to a man impersonating a Ministry of Law investigator who told her she was a suspect in a money-laundering case.

She was offered a “priority financial check” that would move her status from suspect to witness, Deputy Public Prosecutor Yohanes Ng told the court. A third caller, posing as a police officer, instructed her to move S$1 million (US$775,000) from her bank account to her credit card and buy gold at Mustafa Centre in Little India.

She was told to hand the gold to a plainclothes officer, and the scammers sent her a description matching Turah. She bought 1,600 gold bars and packed them into five bags.

Turah traveled to Singapore on Nov. 6, 2025 and met the victim outside Mustafa Centre, identified himself with the fake officer’s name, took the bags of gold and left in a pre-booked car bound for Malaysia.

The woman later realized she had been deceived and alerted police, The Straits Times reported. Officers arrested Turah on Nov. 8 as he tried to re-enter Singapore.

The gold has not been recovered.

Gold has become a favored tool for scam syndicates in Singapore because it is harder to trace than a bank transfer. Police logged at least 131 cases in 2025 of victims buying gold and handing it to scammers, most in government official impersonation scams, The Straits Times reported from the force’s annual scam brief.

Scam cases fell from 51,501 in 2024 to 37,308 in 2025, the first annual drop in years, according to the brief, while losses declined from a record S$1.1 billion to S$913.1 million.