A 41-year-old Singaporean man admitted in court that he sent out fake bomb threats after losing about SGD 2,000 ($1,559) gambling on a cruise ship, sparking hours of disruption and a full security sweep of the vessel.
According to The Straits Times, Neo Hui Ghim pleaded guilty to a single charge of communicating false information about a harmful situation.
“I Hope That One Day Resorts World Cruises Will Explode”
Prosecutors said Neo had boarded a Resorts World Cruises (RWC) ship with his parents for a trip from Singapore to Malaysia on October 11, 2023. During the voyage, he wanted to attend a concert, but he was informed that all the tickets had been sold out, according to deputy public prosecutors Sruthi Boppana and Kelly Ng.
Instead, he chose to spend some time in the casino but rapidly accumulated losses.
The trouble began two days after he got off the ship. Angry about losing money and frustrated that he couldn’t get a concert ticket, he began firing off threatening e-mails less than an hour after disembarkation.
Using the same e-mail account he had used to book the cruise, Neo sent his first message to RWC’s “member booking” team with the subject line “Bomb at Resorts World Cruises.”
In it, he wrote: “If I don’t receive the money I hope that one day Resorts World Cruises will explode and all guests and service personnel will drop into the sea. Next time, if I lose again, I’ll make sure the whole cruise is burnt.”
Within a few hours, he sent two more threats to the customer service team and an employee belonging to the “member booking” team. One of them said, “Please return me back my monies else the ship will explode and everyone dropped into the sea. Next time when I cruise again and happen to lose money I’ll ensure the entire cruise ship explode.” and “Your cruise will be burnt down.”
Panic Took Over
After they read the disturbing emails, RWC’s staff members did a few checks and found that their passengers were responsible for sending them. They immediately forwarded the emails to an RWC port operation senior manager, who contacted the police.
The authorities took the threats seriously and sent over officers from the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority and the police on board. The search of the casino, cabins, and other facilities caused boarding for approximately 4,000 passengers to suffer delays of about two hours.
Nonetheless, because of the manager’s failure to provide “clear information about the accused and whether he was still on the cruise” and the fact that the phone was passed to an auxiliary police officer who was also too panicked to provide the necessary information, the response time was slowed.
The man was arrested later the same day. While his sentencing was first scheduled for September 22, it was later pushed back to October 27 when he faces up to seven years in prison, a fine of SGD 50,000 ($38,981), or both.