Singaporean Faces 124 Charges For Smuggling Cats And Dogs – And Malaysia Keeps Being The Source

Ho Choon Wei was already caught in 2019 running the same Johor Bahru-to-Singapore pipeline, yet he allegedly scale up operations through most of 2024.

Fernando Fong

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A 43-year-old Singapore man is facing 124 criminal charges for allegedly running an eight-month pet smuggling operation that crammed 53 dogs and seven cats into poorly ventilated cages at a Geylang Road shophouse – and it’s not his first time smuggling animals from Malaysia.

Ho Choon Wei first appeared in court in 2019 for recruiting a courier to transport animals from a Johor Bahru pet shop across the Causeway, paying SGD500 per trip.

That courier, Kelvin Seo, was sentenced to 24 weeks in jail in 2021 after six animals were found stuffed in a spare tyre compartment with no ventilation, food or water, while Ho’s charges were still pending.

Now Ho is back, allegedly having scaled up significantly: between February and October 2024, he engaged two men to import 60 animals from Malaysia without any license, using couriers to transport them to 453A Geylang Road, where they were kept for sale.

He had set up a pet grooming business at the same address in December 2022 – a legitimate front that could explain the animals’ presence.

From Puppies to Tarantulas: The Full Scale of the Problem

The conditions are deadly: in a separate May 2024 case, seven puppies and a kitten smuggled across the border were found sedated in a modified car boot, and six died from canine parvovirus – a 75% death rate.

Animals smuggled from Malaysia typically arrive dehydrated, injured or diseased after being transported in cramped, poorly ventilated spaces.

Singapore detected 42 pet smuggling cases from Malaysia at its borders in 2024 alone – the highest on record, averaging almost one case per week.

The bigger risk: animals smuggled from Malaysia, where rabies still exists, could end Singapore’s rabies-free status since the 1950s and trigger a public health crisis.

While Ho’s operation focused on dogs and cats, the broader smuggling problem involves far more than just pets: authorities have intercepted exotic birds crammed into duffel bags, Asian arowana fish, endangered Indian star tortoises en route to Indonesia, live corals, and exotic species like sugar gliders, axolotls, tarantulas and leopard geckos being peddled through messaging apps.

Eighteen cases in 2024 involved illegal wildlife importation – an 80% increase from 2023.

Why Do Smugglers Keep Coming Back?

Economics drive the trade: in Ho’s case, puppies cost less in Malaysia but sell for thousands in Singapore, while legal imports require expensive documentation, health certificates, and quarantine.

Ho appeared in court on 27 March but did not enter a plea, facing up to two years in jail and SGD40,000 in fines for causing unnecessary suffering.

The system had known about Ho since 2019, when he was smuggling from Johor Bahru, yet he allegedly ran an even larger Malaysia-to-Singapore operation for most of 2024.

Malaysia has long been a hub for illegal wildlife trade – most notoriously through Anson Wong, the “Lizard King”, once described as the “Pablo Escobar of animal trafficking,” who smuggled endangered reptiles, rhino horns, and snow leopard pelts globally for decades.

When caught at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2010 with 95 boa constrictors in his luggage, his five-year sentence was reduced to just 17.5 months on appeal, creating international outrage.

As long as there’s a price gap, the Causeway provides easy access, and Malaysia remains lenient on wildlife crime, the smuggling pipeline will continue – and Singapore’s penalties haven’t been enough to stop repeat offenders like Ho.