Totally bad behaviour! Can't she earn her own money?
Dec 23, 2009
11 cheated of $420,000 in 'sure-win' scam Ex-sales promoter given 3-1/2 years' jail for luring people into investing in get-rich-quick scheme
By Khushwant Singh Tan told her friends and acquaintances that the scheme paid a return of 10 per cent a month. -- PHOTO: SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
DECKED in expensive jewellery and always flush with cash, Rose Tan Seng Cheng never failed to draw attention to herself whenever she met friends at the Carriage Bar in York Hotel.
But the 54-year-old was not content with just standing out in the crowd.
She would boast to friends and acquaintances that her healthy financial state was down to her putting money in a 'sure-win' investment scheme that paid a 10 per cent return every month.
She encouraged them to join her and also lured two ex-colleagues into joining the get-rich-quick scheme.
But it was all a scam.
Tan, a former sales promoter, never invested the money, using it instead to pay for her personal expenses.
The married mother of two daughters and a son did keep part of it to maintain the appearance that there was an investment scheme by paying dividends.
A district court heard that only $112,000 of the $421,000 she embezzled was recovered.
She was jailed for 3-1/2 years yesterday for cheating 11 people.
According to court papers, the biggest loser was auditor Kwan Yew Kwong.
Out of the $190,000 the 62-year-old 'invested' from January to October 2007, he received only $15,000 in dividends.
Sales clerk Vivian Yip, 62, was introduced to Tan by a mutual friend in September 2007.
Told that Tan was a kind person who liked to see others prosper, Ms Yip put in about $18,000.
In a telephone interview yesterday, she said Tan would ask her to increase her stake every time they met so as to earn bigger returns.
Starting with $8,000 on Sept 7, she increased it by $4,500 two weeks later and subsequently by another $5,000.
No dividend was paid to her.
When Tan called and told her in November that the money was all gone as the 'main investor' had disappeared, she and several other victims visited the con woman at her Ang Mo Kio flat.
'Rose warned us that not only will we not get back a cent of our hard-earned cash if we go to the police, but we will also get into trouble for being part of an illegal investment scheme,' said Ms Yip.
Tan then stopped answering their calls and was hardly at home.
Another victim, secretary Evelyn Tan Siew Leng, 47, went to the police in December 2007 after she failed to receive dividends the previous month.
Her husband Jolly Chua, 53, a project manager, who was in court yesterday, said that many more victims did not make a police report as they were afraid of being prosecuted.
'Some of them lost their life savings,' he added.
Tan's lawyer Choo Si Sen asked the court for a lenient sentence as his client was a first offender and unlikely to commit any crime in the future.
But District Judge Jasvender Kaur noted that Tan had caused much damage as the victims were mostly 50 to 60 years old and it would be hard for them to recover the money they had lost.
The maximum sentence for cheating is a seven-year jail term and a $10,000 fine for each charge.
Tan was convicted on five charges, with six other offences considered by the judge in sentencing.
'Considering the number of people she cheated, she got off lightly,' muttered Mr Chua outside the courtroom.
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