SINGAPORE — A French student was fined $465 (S$600) after pleading guilty on Thursday to a public nuisance charge in Singapore for filming himself licking a straw from an orange juice vending machine and putting it back in what lawyers described as a social media stunt.
Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 19, admitted to licking the straw and returning it to the vending machine while recording the act for his online followers at a shopping mall in March.
Maximilien posted the video on Instagram with the caption “city is not safe”. He was charged in April after his video went viral.
Many online reacted with disgust to his video, which was reposted on a community page and picked up by local news outlets.
The company that owns the vending machine, iJooz, said it replaced all 500 straws in the machine dispenser after Maximilien’s stunt.
Public nuisance offenders in Singapore face up to a S$2,000 fine, three months in jail, or both.
Prosecutors sought only the maximum fine of $1,551, saying the staged act was intended for social media and risked undermining confidence in the hygiene of a commonly used vending machine.
Maximilien is “truly sorry for having caused all this trouble and he realizes that what appeared to him at that time as something perhaps playful has turned out to be something very consequential,” a defense lawyer was quoted as saying by The Straits Times.
Prosecutors said immigration authorities will decide if Maximilien can keep his student pass in Singapore after considering all relevant factors.
Defense counsel Kalidass Murugayan said the student has been living in Singapore without family support and expressed deep remorse for his actions.
Maximilien studies in a business school in Singapore, but prosecutors told the court he would also be in France from September to December as part of his studies.
Serving freshly-squeezed orange juice at S$2 per cup, iJooz vending machines are a common sight in shopping districts, train stations and housing blocks in Singapore.
Maximilien licked the straw from an iJooz machine in Goldhill Center on 12 March, in one of the city-state’s more affluent neighborhoods, after a boxing workout, Channel News Asia reported.
Source: Saudi Gazette