Chinese national Chen Wei, 43, pleaded guilty to six cheating charges and one charge of not having a valid work pass. - ST
SINGAPORE: In name, he was the registered director of the company, but in practice, he was a “glorified secretary” and the personal assistant to the chairman.
Nonetheless, Chen Wei, 43, was a key cog in an elaborate cryptocurrency investment scam that cheated victims of $1.1 million.
On Wednesday (Sept 11), the Chinese national was sentenced to four years’ jail and fined $6,000 after pleading guilty to six charges of cheating and one charge of not having a valid work pass.
Another eight similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
He will have to serve another 20 days in jail if the fine is not paid.
Chen was the director of A&A Blockchain Technology Innovation, and reported to Dutch national Yang Bin, 61, the company’s chairman and mastermind of the scheme.
The company offered an investment scheme to retail investors, claiming to have 300,000 physical mining machines that could mine cryptocurrency to generate revenue.
But the company did not have such machines and it was all a Ponzi scheme, along with a fake app where investors could monitor their purported 0.5 per cent daily returns.
The app was actually a centralised software programme where system managers based in China could input random numbers to falsely reflect investor returns.
A&A was incorporated in April 2021, after which it began offering the A&A Chain Mining Scheme to investors in Singapore.
Between May 2021 and February 2022, the company attracted investments from more than 700 investors in Singapore, amounting to about $6.7 million.
Because it was a Ponzi scheme, some of the investors were paid returns using monies from newer investors.
When the scheme was uncovered, the losses suffered by investors amounted to about $1.1 million.
Yang was jailed for six years and fined $16,000 on Aug 26 after pleading guilty to six cheating charges and two charges relating to the employment of foreigners. Eleven other charges were considered during sentencing.
On Sept 11, Chen’s lawyer Gary Low told the court his client’s role was “highly administrative” and that he was Yang’s “glorified secretary” who did only what he was instructed to do.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Wong Shiau Yin said Chen was certainly not the mastermind, but this did not detract from the role and function he played in the whole scheme, having been the one to collect the cash from investors.
For each count of cheating, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years, on top of a fine. - The Straits Times/ANN
