On May 31, the owner of the bank account, Danny Lim Kok Tiong, 55, was sentenced to 15 weeks’ jail after he pleaded guilty to three charges, including one for cheating the manager of a remittance agency by submitting a false reason for remitting money to a Malaysian bank account. — Credit Wood photo created by Racool_studio - www.freepik.com
SINGAPORE: She was told by a man she met on Instagram that he had bought her jewellery for her birthday.
To receive the jewellery and a cash gift, she was asked to pay S$10,000 in Customs-related charges.
But two days later, the woman, who had transferred the money to a United Overseas Bank account, made a police report saying she had been cheated.
The police also received other reports linking the same bank account to online scam activities.
On May 31, the owner of the bank account, Danny Lim Kok Tiong, 55, was sentenced to 15 weeks’ jail after he pleaded guilty to three charges, including one for cheating the manager of a remittance agency by submitting a false reason for remitting money to a Malaysian bank account.
Lim’s other two charges were for committing forgery on forms dated in 2020 when he was a financial consultant.
The cheating case was uncovered through investigations that followed the police reports, but the man whom the victim had befriended on Instagram is unknown.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Bryan Wong said a man named Chung had asked one of Lim’s friends between May and June 2021 with a proposition to receive money in his bank account and to remit the money to Malaysian bank accounts in exchange for a service fee.
The friend, who was receiving financial aid, was afraid of losing the aid if a large amount of money was found to have been transferred into his bank account and told Lim about the offer.
Lim, who was interested, was introduced to Chung and agreed to the transfer arrangement.
On June 30, 2021, Lim received S$18,500 in his bank account and received $1,500 from Chung in return. Lim then transferred S$500 to his friend.
In August 2021, Chung told Lim that S$10,000 will be deposited into his bank account, and instructed Lim to transfer S$9,000 to the holder of an Ambank account in Puchong, Malaysia, and keep the remaining S$1,000 as a fee for his involvement.
Chung told Lim to avoid direct online funds transfers and use instead a remittance agency which offered the Pay2Home international money transfer service.
After receiving the S$10,000, Lim visited a remittance agency at Parkway Parade on Aug 10, 2021, to remit S$9,000 to the Ambank account.
He presented the agency’s manager with an invoice to support the remittance request that falsely claimed that the money was payment for marketing-related services provided to him by a company called Nur Syazwani.
DPP Wong asked the court to jail Lim between three and six months, saying that he facilitated money mule activity by undermining the due diligence steps of the remittance agency.
Lim’s lawyer, S. S. Dhillon, asked for 10 weeks’ jail for his client, saying that he had acted foolishly by carrying out Chung’s instructions.
For cheating, Lim could have been jailed for three years, fined or both. In addition, he could have been jailed for four years, fined or both for each count of forgery. – The Straits Times (Singapore)/Asia News Network
