Sentencing for fraud

How does a judge decide on how long a criminal should be sent to jail for fraud? The maximum punishment for the relevant offence is one important fact. The judge will decide based on the facts of the case, whether a sentence at or near the maximum is called for. Some of the factors that the courts consider -

a) the amount of money involved;

b) the degree of planning involved - the more planning, the more serious the criminal activity;

c) how much restitution was made - sometimes, if full restitution is made to the victims of the fraud, a fine may be imposed,

d) whether the criminal co-operated fully with police when caught and whether he pleaded guilty, and

e) whether there is a need to deter that type of offence in the public interest. For example, credit card fraud especially by syndicates is considered very serious because of the potential for great harm to Singapore's status as a business, tourism and financial centre.

It should be noted that there is no mathematical formula that provides a scientific answer to how long a jail sentence should be. An appeal court will only interfere with a lower court's sentence if the sentence is manfestly and clearly too low or too high.

One point to be noted is the effect of a bulk discount from the court. In order words, a person who commits 50 offences of the same type is not usually sentenced to 10 times the jail sentence of another offender who commits only 5 offences similar to the 1st offender's. The reason for this is the concept that the overall effect of a sentence should not normally be crushing. For example, if the normal sentence for a fraud offence is 6 months jail, if a strict mathematical approach is used, one who commits 50 of that type of offence should strictly speaking be sentenced to 300 months' jail. This is more than 20 years jail. Such long sentences are usually reserved only for serious fraud involving mult-million dollar losses.