“If you complain, we will kill you”

The two workers from Lucky Moon speak to TWC2’s Communications Officer

As Jogar watches the smiles in the crowd, the air suddenly feels heavy and his eyes prickle. Not a single person in this cheering mass understands the burden on his shoulders: the death threats he has received, the helplessness that comes with human-trafficking-like conditions, and $15,000 lost to a scammer in Singapore.

Here is the story of a Training Employment Pass victim, told first-hand to us across a table in our office.

Getting a job

Jogar first comes to TWC2 on a Wednesday afternoon in June with another worker, Salim, who was scammed in an almost identical manner. As they recount their anguished tales, I sense the office around us growing quieter and quieter as our caseworkers and interns listen in.

When Jogar first heard about a job opportunity in Singapore, he jumped at the chance to secure a better future for his family. 

A mutual contact put him in touch with a Bangladeshi man called Afzal, who was already working in Singapore – and who acted as a job fixer (or informal “agent”) for Jogar. Through their WhatsApp conversations, Afzal convinced Jogar that he would be able to get him an “NTS” job in Singapore, referring to a Work Permit or S Pass under the Ministry of Manpower’s list of Non-Traditional Source countries. Jogar was told he would work as an “ATM booth assistant”, with a monthly salary of $2,500.

Nothing is free, of course, and for first-time workers like Jogar, recruitment fees demanded by informal agents are not cheap. Astronomical would be a better description.

To afford this chance at a job, he sold the family land of his recently-deceased parents. And on 12 November 2024, he sent $3,000 to a Bangladeshi bank account specified by Afzal – which was merely the down-payment – as well as a copy of his passport to kickstart the job application process. Three months later, a job materialised, and Afzal sent him the In-Principle Approval (IPA) over WhatsApp.

There were all sorts of things wrong with the document, however.

While the stated salary was higher than promised ($3,000), he noticed that the job was for a construction manager in Lucky Moon Pte Ltd., under a Training Employment Pass. It only allowed Jogar to work in Singapore for three months. This was not what he signed up for, but Afzal once again reassured him that Bangladeshis don’t get “NTS permits”, and that he would first have to come to Singapore with a Training Employment Pass, before converting it to a Work Permit.

(Just to be clear, there is no such thing as an “NTS permit”.)

Of course, to those of us who know the ins-and-outs of Singapore’s migrant labour laws, the falsity of these promises is glaringly obvious. But like many scam victims, Jogar fell easily for these lies out of a mix of hope and ignorance. With a life hemmed in by dwindling options and a duty to provide for his four sisters, wife and children, even the faintest glimmer of something better became worth reaching for.

And so, ignoring these red flags, Jogar transferred another $12,000 to four different Bangladeshi accounts and boarded the plane to Singapore on 14 March 2025. Unbeknownst to him, the scam was now complete and there is virtually nothing he can do to get this money back.

While we are not sure whom those bank accounts belong to, it is almost certain that they are linked to others involved in this scam. Afzal, Jogar tells us, was only a construction worker in Singapore, but he was able to deliver an IPA. How did he get the document? IPAs for Training Employment Passes can only be applied for by employers; not even agents. Afzal (or his partner in the scam) had likely either bought the CorpPass identity of the owners of Lucky Moon, or paid them a cut to create the IPA application. As we will see, Afzal could also tap into a network of informal labour, and had contacts who were able to provide ad-hoc work for Jogar.

Downward spiral

When Jogar arrived in Singapore, the contours of the scam began to take shape. He was given a number to contact and an address to head towards: Kinta Road, near Mustafa, a well-known shopping centre. Someone (a “company representative”, he was told) met him near Mustafa and showed him to his accommodation.

He was soon given a few contact numbers, and was told to call these numbers to get information regarding available work. Over the next two months, he worked in ad-hoc renovation and construction jobs, erecting T100 barricades in Marina Bay, and cleaning car showrooms in MacPherson. He was essentially a day labourer sent here and there.

When he asked Afzal when his Training Employment Pass could be converted into a longer-term permit, he was repeatedly told to wait.

It was in this last gig that he met Salim (name changed) and they bonded over their shared plight. Salim, too, tells me that he had been scammed of a similar amount, in a similar way. Unlike Jogar who had land to sell, Salim borrowed $1,000 from his younger brother, $1,000 from his older brother, $1,500 from his older brother-in-law, and paid $500 of his own money. To make up the total sum required, he also borrowed $9,000 from the bank with a five-year loan that would be paid off from his wife’s salary as a school teacher in Bangladesh. 

Looking at the two men, it is difficult to say who is in a worse position. Salim, who is now in crushing debt with no stable income to pay it off – or Jogar, who lost his land inheritance to pay for this lie of a job.

“I’m an orphan,” Jogar tells me, choking up. “My father died three years ago, then my mother also died two years ago.”

By this point, the entire office is silent, save for the rustle of tissue paper and Jogar’s sobs. I give him some time to gather himself, and exchange somber glances with our intern, both of us knowing that there is little we can do to help him recover the lost funds.

Jogar continues, “I have a lot of mental pressure. Company people tell me, ‘If you complain, we will kill you.’”

“They say, ‘You have no people in Singapore. What people will save you?’”

In his room on Kinta Road, he says, there was already one man who had been rough with him. They also told him that because of some documents he signed at the Bangladesh airport in exchange for his flight tickets here, he would not be able to make a claim – that these papers would be evidence against him if he went to authorities here for help. Jogar doesn’t quite know what these papers detailed, since they were in English, but we have seen other victims of Training Employment Pass scams who have been forced to sign false payslips.

It is difficult to dismiss his experience as just another sob story or just another naive scam victim when we realise how we, too, might be culpable in this.

The massive misuse of the Training Employment Passes (with 120 cases of abuse reported in just the first half of 2025, and many more going unreported) occurs in industries that struggle with a shortage of cheap labour. Not only have victims like Jogar and Salim been massively cheated through false promises, many of these abuses also contain indicators of human trafficking and modern-day slavery: from deceptive recruitment to debt bondage and the threat of physical force.

The next time we notice a new cleaner in our office pantry or spot a dishwasher at the back of a restaurant, or attend an event with neat barricades – don’t forget that we, too, might be benefitting from somebody’s affliction.

The more callous-hearted amongst us will quip: If they don’t like it here, they can just not come. Why, indeed, did Jogar risk it all to come here?

“I need to pay my daughter’s school money,” he finishes quietly.

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