There are dumb ways to go viral, and then there is what a 19-year-old French business student pulled off in Singapore. He walked up to a public juice machine, licked one of the straws, stuck it right back in the dispenser, filmed the whole thing, and posted it online. His caption? “city is not safe.” A few months later, he was standing in a courtroom wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, apologizing to a judge.
His name is Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, and on Thursday he pleaded guilty to a public nuisance charge. The final tab came out to 600 Singapore dollars, or about 465 American bucks. That is cheap for the amount of attention he got, but pretty expensive for a single lick of a plastic straw.
What He Actually Did
The whole thing went down on March 12 at a shopping mall. The machine was an IJooz unit, one of those bright orange kiosks you see all over Singapore that squeeze fresh orange juice on the spot for around two Singapore dollars a cup. Maximilien grabbed a straw from the dispenser, licked it, put it back where the next customer would reach for it, and recorded it for his followers.
The clip landed on Instagram and spread fast. By April, police had charged him. His defense later argued that he pulled the licked straw back out to use for his own drink, so it was never actually meant for a stranger. That detail ended up mattering in court, but it did not save him from the whole country watching his video and cringing. You can read the full breakdown of how it unraveled.
The Caption Made It Worse
Here is the part that really rubbed people the wrong way. He didn’t just post the video. He captioned it “city is not safe,” like he was some kind of undercover investigator exposing a hidden danger, instead of the guy who created the mess in the first place. It read less like a joke and more like a taunt aimed at a place that takes cleanliness very seriously.
That framing is a big reason the backlash hit so hard. Singaporeans didn’t see a harmless prank. They saw a foreign student mock their public spaces and dare people to react. And react they did.
What Happened in Court
Judge Kelly Ho handed down the sentence. She said that given Maximilien’s age and the nature of the offense, options like probation or a community-based sentence would not be imposed. So he skipped the possibility of having to do supervised service and got the fine instead.
Prosecutors could have pushed hard. The public nuisance charge carries a penalty of up to three months in jail and a maximum fine of 2,000 Singapore dollars, which is about $1,551. They asked only for the fine and agreed the offense sat at the “lower end” of seriousness. Their reasoning: he retrieved the straw himself, no member of the public actually used it, there was no evidence anyone got hurt, he was young, and he pleaded guilty at the earliest chance. A separate mischief charge got folded into the sentencing too.
His defense counsel, Kalidass Murugayan, told the court the student had been living in Singapore without family support and was deeply sorry. “He is fully sorry for having caused all this trouble,” the lawyer said. His parents sat in the gallery, watched the whole thing, then left the courthouse without saying a word to reporters. The lawyer added that his parents would make sure their son paid the fine himself, which is a nice little punishment on top of the legal one.
Why Singapore Doesn’t Play Around
If you have never been, here is the quick version. Singapore is a tightly packed city-state that runs its public spaces like a well-oiled machine. There are rules about behavior and cleanliness that would make most Americans blink. Littering gets you fined. Vandalism gets you in serious trouble. The country is famous for its firm stance on chewing gum, of all things.
So a tourist filming himself dirtying a shared juice machine and then bragging about it online was never going to slide. Singapore has a reputation for a no-nonsense response to public stunts, and this case fit that pattern perfectly. The fine was on the lighter side, but the message was loud: the rules apply to visitors too, and the internet fame is not a shield.
The Juice Company Cleaned House
IJooz, the company that runs the machine, did not just shrug this off. It filed a police report over the stunt. Then it sanitized the whole dispenser and swapped out every single straw. All 500 of them. One licked straw, and they tossed the entire batch to be safe.
The company also announced upgrades to its machines. Going forward, it wants individually packaged straws and compartments that only unlock after you finish paying. In other words, one guy’s Instagram bit forced a company to redesign its equipment. That is a lot of ripple from a very small act.
This Wasn’t Even an Original Idea
Part of what made this stunt land so badly is that it copied a trend people already hated. A few years back, a wave of “sushi terrorism” videos came out of Japan, where people filmed themselves messing with food at conveyor-belt restaurants, licking soy sauce bottles, and touching shared items. Those clips caused real financial damage to businesses and made a lot of customers nervous about eating out.
So Maximilien wasn’t breaking new ground. He was recycling a played-out gag that had already burned bridges in another country. The straw video echoed that same contamination-prank trend, which is why it hit a nerve so quickly. People had seen this move before, and they were already done with it.
His Bigger Problem Isn’t the Fine
Here is the twist that could actually sting more than 465 dollars. Maximilien studies at a business school in Singapore, but he is scheduled to be in France from September to December as part of his coursework. The logistics of a community sentence never really worked anyway, since he had to leave the country for school and his family had trouble arranging a guardian for him.
The real question hanging over him is whether he gets to come back. Prosecutors told the court that immigration authorities will decide if he can keep his student pass in Singapore after weighing all the relevant factors. So the fine is settled, but his future as a student there is not. Imagine blowing up your whole education abroad for a few seconds of online clout. He left the court without speaking to reporters, which was probably the smartest decision he made all year. Here is where things stand on his status.
Was the Punishment Enough?
Honestly, opinions are all over the place on this one. Some people think 600 Singapore dollars is a slap on the wrist for something that made a company scrap 500 straws and rebuild its machines. Others point out that he is a broke 19-year-old paying it out of his own pocket, apologized right away, and never actually put anyone in danger since he took the straw back for himself.
Both takes have a point. The fine itself is small. But the fine was never really the whole cost. He got publicly named across international news, dragged through a courtroom in front of his parents, and now sits in limbo over whether he can even finish school in the country he insulted. That is a rough return on a video that probably took thirty seconds to film.
The lesson here is pretty simple, and it applies whether you are in Singapore or standing in line at a gas station in Ohio. The camera does not make you untouchable. If anything, it just hands the authorities the evidence. Maximilien wanted to prove the city was not safe. Instead he proved that the city was watching, and that it had no problem sending him a bill.
