SINGAPORE: A man and woman from China were arrested in early September after they had scammed a man near Joo Koon MRT. They pretended to be in need and ended up cheating the man out of S$800.
The authorities later found out that they travelled to Singapore for the express purpose of cheating people, with the prosecution saying that they treated Singapore like a “hunting ground.”
Last week, the man, 31-year-old Ma Yongwang, was sentenced to 11 months’ jail. His wife, meanwhile, 30-year-old Liu Yaxue, was given a nine-month sentence.
The Police were first alerted to the couple’s activities on Sep 4, after they had approached a 23-year-old Malaysian man at the main entrance of a supermarket located along Joo Koon Circle the previous day. They introduced themselves using fake names, claimed to be tourists from Hong Kong, and said that their bank card had malfunctioned and they had no money to spend in Singapore.
Ma asked the man to buy them dinner. Their victim agreed and brought them to a food court. During the course of their meal, Ma told the man that he urgently needed S$800 to pay for his hotel stay, asking to borrow it from the victim and promising to transfer HK$5,500 (around S$917) in return.
He then fabricated a bank transfer receipt to the victim as proof of payment in exchange for the cash.
To add to his credibility, the man also gave the victim their “gold” wedding ring, which they claimed was worth RM11,980 (around S$3,766). This ring later turned out to be fake, which the victim discovered when he brought it to a pawnshop.
The victim later discovered that no money had been transferred to his account and that the ring was counterfeit and went to the Police.
Within 24 hours, officers from Tanglin Police Division were able to establish the identities of the couple and, upon their arrest, seized several identical counterfeit gold rings, S$1,578 in cash, and mobile phones containing fabricated transaction receipts.
According to a report in Shin Min Daily News, the couple admitted that they had brought the rings from China and had planned to scam people in the same way they had victimised the man.
The couple had arrived in Singapore on Sep 2 and were staying at a hotel in Geylang. They intended to leave by Sep 5, the day they were arrested.
The report says that Ma and Liu burst into tears when their sentence was read and asked for a lighter sentence, and that Liu handed in a written apology to the victim, saying she was ashamed for what she had done and for wasting public resources. /TISG
