A former Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) captain was jailed for 21 months and two weeks on Wednesday after cheating five colleagues of nearly S$87,000 and committing several vaping-related offences. Benjamin Song Yong Pang, 38, pleaded guilty to five cheating charges and four charges involving e-vaporisers, according to a report by The Straits Times. He was also fined S$6,000 and has since made full restitution to his victims.
Song, who was a deputy cluster commander at Supply Base North in Nee Soon Camp, deceived his colleagues on more than 39 occasions between May 2021 and March 2024. Many of the five victims were his own subordinates, and court documents showed the scheme traced back to credit card debt Song built up between 2011 and 2018 through visits to Thai clubs and karaoke lounges.
Ex-SAF Captain Jailed for Cheating Five Colleagues of S$86,750
The five victims handed Song a combined total of S$86,750, with individual losses ranging from S$10,000 to S$27,050. Song told them he would invest their money on their behalf, or that he urgently needed funds to cover his mother’s medical bills.
None of that money went toward the purposes Song described. He instead used the funds to pay off his own debts and cover personal expenses, court documents showed.
Prosecutors said Song’s rank gave the scheme its reach. His victims were largely people who reported to him directly, which shaped how comfortable they felt refusing his requests.
How Song Deceived Colleagues over Nearly Three Years
The deception ran for close to three years before it came to light. Court documents did not disclose exactly how Song’s offences were uncovered, though he was arrested in April 2024.
One of Song’s subordinates told investigators he agreed to hand over money because he was afraid to say no to his superior officer. That admission pointed to the power imbalance running through the case, since refusing a direct request from a commanding officer carries different weight inside a military hierarchy than it would in an ordinary workplace.
Song’s debt, which prosecutors said originated from his patronage of Thai clubs and KTVs between 2011 and 2018, was never disclosed in an exact figure. What is clear is that the debt predated the cheating offences by several years, suggesting Song had already been under sustained financial pressure before he began drawing on his colleagues’ money.
A Vaping Culture Built on A Superior’s Orders
Alongside the cheating charges, Song admitted to four offences involving e-vaporisers, including possession of vaping devices. He vaped openly in his office at Nee Soon Camp, located on Transit Road near Sembawang Road.
A Health Sciences Authority prosecutor told the court that Song leveraged his position to draw colleagues and subordinates into the habit. “The accused leveraged his position as a superior officer to involve his colleagues and subordinates in ordering vaporisers and pods on his behalf, with some transactions occurring through consolidated orders to avoid delivery fees rather than for profit-making purposes,” the prosecutor said.
Investigations also found that Song introduced a female colleague to vaping directly, giving her a vaping device and distributing vape pods to her. The pattern described in court suggests Song had normalised vaping within his section of the camp well before investigators became involved, using consolidated orders among subordinates as a way to reduce delivery costs rather than to profit from resale.
From Nightclub Debts to A Prison Sentence: How the Case Unfolded
Song originally faced a broader set of allegations than the charges he was ultimately sentenced on. Court records from an earlier hearing in June 2026 described him admitting to cheating 16 victims of more than S$143,000 in total, a wider scope than the five-victim, S$86,750 case that led to Wednesday’s sentencing.
That gap reflects how Singapore’s courts often handle cheating cases involving multiple counts. Additional charges can be taken into consideration for sentencing purposes without each one resulting in a separate conviction, which explains why Song’s final sentence rests on five cheating charges even though investigators had identified a larger number of alleged victims.
Song has since left the SAF and is no longer serving as a captain. The court noted his full restitution to the five victims named in his conviction as a mitigating factor, though it did not appear to be enough to avoid a custodial sentence given the abuse of his rank.
This Case Sits Far from Singapore’s Celebrated Aviation Reputation
Song’s conviction touches the army side of Singapore’s armed forces, a world away from the country’s global reputation in aviation. The Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), the SAF’s air arm, and flag carrier Singapore Airlines have spent decades building a very different kind of institutional trust, one built on technical ambition and customer service rather than the abuse of rank this case exposed.
The RSAF has opened early, exploratory talks about joining the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), the sixth-generation fighter project led by the UK, Italy, and Japan. Singapore is weighing that future technology even before its first F-35B stealth fighters arrive later this year, a sign of the long-range planning that has defined the force’s procurement decisions for decades.
Singapore Airlines, meanwhile, currently operates the two longest scheduled passenger flights in the world, connecting Singapore nonstop with both New York and Newark on ultra-long-haul Airbus A350-900ULR aircraft. Those routes have held the world record since 2021, a title Qantas’ Project Sunrise is not expected to overtake until October 2027.
The airline’s reputation extends beyond raw distance into how its crews treat individual passengers. In one widely shared case, Singapore Airlines cabin crew built a makeshift hook from chopsticks, a bobby pin, and adhesive plasters to rescue a passenger’s ring after it slipped into a gap in her seat, rather than making her wait until after landing for ground engineers. The passenger later called the moment a “core memory,” and the episode drew a wave of online praise for the airline’s service culture.
Those stories illustrate the contrast at the heart of Song’s case. The same institutional structure that lets a superior officer pressure subordinates into handing over money is, in other parts of Singapore’s defence and aviation establishment, associated with long-term planning discipline and a service culture built on going well beyond the minimum for the people it serves.