All for the Money

Sarah Ooi

Description

Everyone wants to have more money and most of us work hard to earn a living. However, there are some among us who complain that their money is not enough but instead of earning their money, they take the easy way and conspire to cheat and con others to achieve their means. Cases featured in this book include the owner of a online blog shop who offered bargain goods that did not exist; the insurance agent who sold her millionaire client a non-existent premium policy; the four top chefs from luxury hotels charged with corruption in a S$1 million kickback case; the top surgeon who heavily overcharged her foreign clients; a syndicate that cloned ATM cards to steal from a major bank. These are the stories of the men and women who let their love of money get the better of them.

Sujets

• True crime

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 25 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814634731
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

2014 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Ooi, Sarah, author.
All for the money : bribery, cheats, swindles and other monetary fraud in Singapore / Sarah Ooi. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2014
pages cm
ISBN : 978-981-4561-08-2 (paperback)
e-ISBN : 978 981 4634 73 1
1. White collar crimes - Singapore. 1. Commercial crimes - Singapore.
I. Title.
HV6771.S55
364.168095957 - dc23 OCN883696225
Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Non-existent Policy
Chapter 2 Casino Cheats
Chapter 3 Shaking the Firm Ground
Chapter 4 The Gold Bar Murders
Chapter 5 Insurance Fraudsters
Chapter 6 Online Scammers
Chapter 7 Ren Ci Scandal
Chapter 8 A Rare Case of Kidnapping
Chapter 9 Flying High on Borrowed Money
Chapter 10 A High Price to Pay
Chapter 11 Top Chefs
Chapter 12 A Case of Fixed Results
Chapter 13 City Harvest
About the Author

MONEY CAN BE A DRIVING force that pushes people to do many things, and sometimes commit crimes. In many cases, duplicity is at the heart of those crimes and in some cases, the desperation for money can even result in murder. Even in a country like Singapore, often touted as having a low crime rate, corruption and fraud cases occur and sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars.
The cases mentioned in this book are varied. They include heinous crimes like murder and kidnapping, as well as scams that involve large syndicates and for which the real masterminds may well still be at large. As society changes, so will the modus operandi of criminals as they come up with more creative ways of cheating. Some will try to cheat insurance companies in the hope of getting compensation, while others will move to the online space. Certainly, the opening of the two integrated resorts with casinos in Singapore provides an even greater opportunity and temptation for some to try their luck at cheating.
We might be tempted to ask how we can identify cheats, or untrustworthy employees because certainly, in some of the cases mentioned, such as the casino cheats or the SIA employee who stole millions from his company, the insider is a main player in the scam. However, there is no predetermined face or age or race to a criminal. The criminals in this book, or those accused of crime, cover a wide age range. Their socio-economic backgrounds are also vastly different.
Even charities are not spared and in two cases covered, it is the people at the top who are being taken to task for misuse of funds and abusing their position. As they ride on the wave of donor generosity, their own lifestyles or attempts at deception raise serious questions about their real intentions. Ren Ci Hospital s CEO, Ming Yi, who is a monk, led a life of luxury even while performing death-defying feats to raise funds for poor families with hefty medical bills. The City Harvest Church has had six of its leaders arrested for a misuse of church funds and for attempts to falsify documents to cover up the misuse of millions of dollars.
Whatever their backgrounds, whatever their mode of operation, the cases in this book centre around one motivating factor - money.

IN 2010, A SENSATIONAL CRIME made the newspaper headlines for being the first instance in Singapore where an insurance agent sold a non-existent policy. This sensational case involved the sale of a fake policy by an ex-AIA insurance agent to an Indonesian businessman with premiums costing US$5 million.
BACKGROUND
Sally Low Ai Ming used to be an AIA insurance agent. She rose through the ranks to be one of the top agents, making it to the Top of the Table (TOT), the highest honour among Million Dollar Round Table agents. She had even been featured in The Sunday Times in March 2001 and was among the youngest agents in the world to be considered a TOT agent.
In 2000, she got to know Enny Ariandini Pramana (aged 71), the wife of Indonesian businessman Ong Han Ling, who soon became her client. From that time on, Low sold Enny several policies and soon became a trusted agent. According to Mr Ong, she often visited them in their home on Scotts Road.
THE BEGINNING OF THE DECEPTION
In 2002, Low told Mr Ong about a new policy, called the AIA Thank You Policy that was offered only to a select group of clients. In order to take up this policy, Mr Ong had to pay a premium of US$5 million, of which US$3.3 million comprised a US-dollar component and S$3 million was for a Singapore-dollar component. Mr Ong made the premium payment to AIA via telegraphic transfers in November 2002.
The policy was supposed to have a maturity payment after five years. The payout included annual fixed returns of 6 per cent for the US-dollar component and 7 per cent for the Singapore-dollar component. This would have worked out to a maturity value of about US$4.95 million for the US-dollar component and S$4.5 million for the Singapore-dollar component.
As part of her scam to sell Mr Ong a fake policy, Low also falsified official forms and forged documents. After making the payment for the AIA Thank You Policy, Mr Ong was said to have received three fake policy documents from Low as confirmation that the policy application had been approved.
However, without Mr Ong s knowledge, Low had used that premium payment made out to AIA to purchase four policies in Mr Ong and his wife s names. She had submitted forged documents to AIA in order to purchase those policies.
In January 2005, Low told Mr Ong that two computer errors at AIA led to the issuance of a policy that was erroneously taken out under his name. In actuality, there were no computer errors. She then informed Mr Ong that in order for him not to lose his money, he had to assist in the surrender of the erroneous policy.
The plan was for AIA to issue Mr Ong a cheque for S$6.18 million. Mr Ong then had to repay the principal sum of S$5.3 million to AIA. For his efforts, he could keep the profit of S$887,000, which was supposedly the amount of profit AIA would have made from the policy.
However, unlike the initial premium payment, the sum of S$5.3 million was not to be paid out to AIA, but to Ms Low. This was a highly unusual practice. Initially, Mr Ong was reluctant to go ahead with this instruction but Low reassured him that she was authorised by her company to collect the money. She even produced a letter signed by Mark O Dell, the general manager of AIA at that time, stating that she could collect the money on behalf of the insurer. Hence reassured, Mr Ong issued a cheque to Low.
In September 2006, Low used the same ploy again. She informed Mr Ong of yet another computer glitch that led to two policies being taken out in Enny s name. Like the previous occasion, she told him to make payments in the same way and gave him another signed document by Mr O Dell as proof of her authority to receive payment on behalf of AIA. Mr Ong then transferred additional sums of US$1 million and S$1 million to Low.
DISCOVERY
It was only in early 2008, that Low s deception was finally discovered. In December 2007, just before the maturity payouts were due for the fake AIA Thank You Policy, Low produced a letter signed by Mr Edmund Tse, Chairman and CEO of AIA. In the letter, Mr Ong was asked if he wanted to use the proceeds from the first AIA Thank You Policy and reinvest them in a new AIA Thank You 3 Policy. This however required an additional single-premium payout of US$8 million.
Unable to raise the money in such a short time, Mr Ong then contacted AIA directly with the intent of asking for additional time to raise the premium amount. AIA then informed Mr Ong in January 2008 that the Thank You Policies were in fact, non-existent.
Instead, it was discovered that of the four policies Low took out in Mr Ong and his wife s names, three were policies that Low had tricked them into surrendering in 2005 and 2006, the very same ones that were supposedly a result of the computer glitches.
The surrender amounts of about US$5.29 million, US$1 million and S$1 million had been delivered to Low. She transferred the money to a bank account of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands with the beneficiary of the account being Low, herself. The proceeds were also to pay the down payment for a Sentosa Cove condo.
After Mr Ong contacted AIA, the insurer suspected that Low had cheated Mr Ong and made a