Singapore man sentenced to almost 4 years for drug possession in scheme to frame wife

Aug. 30 (UPI) -- A Singapore man has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for possessing cannabis he acquired to set up his wife for a potential death sentence that would enable him to get around the city-state's strict divorce requirements and escape from the marriage.

However, 37-year-old Tan Xianglong, was caught on dashcam tampering with her car in October before off-camera gaining access and hiding 1.1 pounds of drugs inside, sufficient to get her the death penalty under Singapore's tough drug trafficking law.

The court heard he had earlier told his then-girlfriend in a social media chat message that he had come up with the "perfect crime" to frame his estranged wife from whom he separated in 2022, a year after they tied the knot.

But unbeknownst to Tan, less than half of the block of cannabis he had purchased from a chat forum on the social media platform Telegram -- weighing it himself to be sure it was at least 1.1 pounds -- was the real thing. Most of it was made up of filler.

"He understood that the involved party would be wrongly arrested and charged with a serious crime if his plan succeeded," the prosecution wrote in court documents.

The penalty for trafficking cannabis in Singapore, defined as selling, smuggling or attempting to smuggle 1.1 pounds or more and just a half ounce for heroin, is a mandatory death sentence and it is imposed on a frequent basis with three people executed in a little more than a week in summer 2023.

After receiving an automated tampering notification from her car, Tan's wife viewed the footage and made a harassment complaint to the police but ended up getting arrested herself after officers checking out the vehicle found 11 packages of drugs hidden between the rear passenger seats.

However, suspicion quickly fell on Tan who was arrested shortly afterward.

Online logs from his social media accounts presented by the court, show Tan telling his girlfriend he had "spent quite a bit on this" and he was pretty sure there would not be a "link back" to him.

Tan and his wife married in 2021 and separated a year later but by 2023 Tan was in debt and irked at his wife for "not contributing much" to the marriage.

He wanted out but was unable to file for divorce because Singapore mandates that couples must wait three years before they can legally end their marriage.

Tan initially hired a private investigator to gather evidence on his wife for grounds for divorce due to adultery but when that was unsuccessful he hatched the plan to frame her for drugs, believing his wife's criminal record -- or worse -- would exempt their case from the waiting period.

The court dismissed mitigation arguments from Tan's counsel that their client was suffering from depression at the time he committed the offenses because medical reports found no sign of a mental health condition.

After admitting to a single charge of cannabis possession, the court sentenced Tan to three years and 10 months, taking into account an additional count of illegal planting of evidence in the sentencing.