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Ex-banker convicted on sex charge in Singapore

A Swiss former banker was found guilty on Tuesday of having sex with an underage Singaporean prostitute.

Published: 30 April 2013 14:22 CEST
Ex-banker convicted on sex charge in Singapore
The former Swiss banker was convicted of sex with a minor. Photo: AFP

The case caused a scandal as it involved several prominent men in the city state.

Juerg Buergin, 41, was found guilty by a district court of two charges of having sex with a 17-year-old call girl and will be sentenced on May 8.

Judge Eddy Tham said Buergin had failed to disprove the charges that sexual intercourse between him and the girl took place on two occasions in 2010 and 2011.

Buergin, a married former executive with banking giant UBS, had said at the start of his trial in March that he was tricked into thinking the girl was older than 17.

Prostitution is legal in Singapore but it is against the law to pay for the sexual services of girls under 18, in a bid to protect the young from exploitation.

The case caused an uproar last year after Buergin and 50 other men were accused of paying for sex with the girl.

One of them was socialite and environmental activist Howard Shaw, 41, a grandson of Asian movie mogul Runme Shaw.

Buergin, who arrived in court Tuesday wearing a dark business suit, was calm and showed no visible reaction after the verdict was read.

State prosecutors asked for a sentence of "not less than six months" for each of the two charges.

Court documents show that Buergin booked the prostitute, who went by the name "Chantelle" on an escort agency's website, on two occasions in September 2010 and January 2011.

He met her at luxury hotels for paid sex.

Buergin made the bookings under a false name "Robert James" but the mobile phone number he used was traced to UBS, which had assigned the number to him, according to the documents.

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CRIME

How to avoid the ‘police’ phone scam in Switzerland

The Swiss government has issued a warning about an increasing number of fake calls purporting to be from police. But there are ways to avoid this scam.

Published: 18 April 2024 13:20 CEST
How to avoid the 'police' phone scam in Switzerland

Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has been monitoring the phenomenon of fake calls from alleged police authorities for nine months now.

But in the last three weeks, reports of this scam have almost tripled, the NCSC said, indicating just how widespread it is.

What is this about?

The scam begins with a call coming, allegedly, from police or another Swiss authority.

A voice, which the NCSC describes as ‘robotic’, informs the person who answers the call that their personal banking data is involved in criminal activities, or makes a similar alarming (but false) claim.

According to the NCSC, “it is not a person who calls, but a software The machine randomly tries Swiss phone numbers throughout the day. If the number is invalid, it simply moves on to the next one.”

“By using this software, the number of calls that can be made is virtually unlimited. It could go through practically all the phone numbers in Switzerland in a day,” the Centre adds.

After raising alarm about your bank account, the fake ‘policeman’ will urge you to “press 1” to be put in touch with a human being and obtain more information.

If you do this and, worse yet, divulge your personal data to the caller, you risk having your computer and credit card hacked.

What should you do (and not do) if you get this call?

The most obvious answer is to immediately hang up because, as the NCSC explains, “real police never play recorded phone messages. They also never ask for money or sensitive personal data over the phone.”

To that end, the Centre recommends that anyone receiving this call: 

  • Should hang up as soon as you hear the recorded message
  • Not press 1, or any other numbers, during the telephone conversation
  • Not get drawn into a conversation.
  • Never grant access to your computer, not even via remote maintenance software.
  • Never reveal prepaid card activation codes.

A fake tax refund

While the ‘police scam’ is the latest attempt at extortion reported to the NCSC, it is far from a unique case.

Scores of them are reported to the authorities each year, including the one reported earlier in 2024.

It involved phishing emails about alleged tax refund entitlements.

However, the link in the email leads to a phishing page. 

Here too, authorities advise to ignore these emails, not click on the link, and not enter any personal data on the phishing page.

READ ALSO : The common scams foreigners in Switzerland need to be aware of

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