Thursday September 29, 2005
Malaysian stings Aussie banks
MELBOURNE: A Malaysian casino high roller tricked banks out of millions of dollars by using fake documents to obtain loans.
The County Court here was told that Joe Ng created the documents on his computer in a garage and submitted the loan applications from Internet cafes, according to a Herald Sun newspaper report on Tuesday.
Ng needed the money to feed his gambling habit and to pay off loan sharks, the court heard.
His loan applications were almost always for less than A$25,000 (RM71,000) to avoid scrutiny. Many of them were to buy the same car from the same person.
The Commonwealth Bank had written off up to A$1.5mil (RM4.2mil) in loans to Ng and co-offender, Claude Rizk.
Chief Judge Michael Rozenes criticised banks for not making more checks to prevent swindlers like Ng and Rizk from cheating the banks.
He said he was surprised that cross-checking was not done by the banks to ensure that the same vehicle was not being used to get more than one loan.
Ng, 37, of Box Hill, gambled much of cash from the loans at Crown casino and gaming venues in Sydney and Brisbane.
He spent over A$6.6mil (RM18.48mil) at one casino in just three months this year, the newspaper said.
The police officer who tracked Ng's fraudulent deals described him as one of Australia’s most prolific con artists.
“My own investigation alone has linked him to 131 loans totalling more than A$2mil (RM5.7mil) in one eight-month period at just Commonwealth Bank branches,” said Detective Sgt Paul Lunt.
The court was told that police in Queensland also wanted to question Ng in relation to at least 900 similar loans.
Ng also arranged fraudulent loans for fellow punters with gambling debts, earning a hefty commission for himself.
He pleaded guilty to 13 fraud charges involving 36 loans worth A$781,282 (RM2.18mil) and two charges relating to an attempt to use a A$65,000 (RM182,000) cheque belonging to someone else.
Det Sgt Lunt said Ng and Rizk were well known in Melbourne’s Asian and Arabic communities as organisers of fraudulent personal loans.
Sentencing will be decided at a later date to be fixed by the court. – Bernama
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