SINGAPORE: After entering into a relationship with a woman he had met online, who claimed to be based in Dubai, a man agreed to receive monies in his bank account and transfer them on her behalf.
When the police warned him to stop moving the funds for her, he ignored them and continued to do so, in hopes that she would come to Singapore and marry him.
Singaporean Lim Jian Qiang, 34, was sentenced to four weeks’ jail on Thursday (Mar 27), after pleading guilty to one count of receiving stolen property with another charge taken into consideration for his sentencing.
WHAT HAPPENED
The court heard that Lim had befriended an unknown online persona called “Latifa” sometime in 2018 and started communicating with her.
He considered her to be his fiancee and intended to marry her. To date, Lim has never met Latifa.
In 2020, Latifa started to ask Lim to receive money with his bank account on her behalf and to transfer it onward following her instructions, which he agreed to do.
Lim was later investigated by the police in August 2020 for receiving monies which were the subject of police reports. The complainants in those reports complained that they were each victim of a tenancy-related scam.
During this investigation, he admitted that he had received these monies on Latifa’s behalf and then used the funds to buy cryptocurrency and transferred them as directed by her.
According to court documents, he admitted – during that investigation – that he did not know the source of the funds, and was worried that Latifa might be engaged in illegal activities but agreed to help her with the transfers so that she would come to Singapore and marry him.
The police warned Lim that by receiving and transferring monies on behalf of Latifa without a valid licence, he might be committing an offence and told him not to continue providing such services for her.
Despite this, he continued to receive money on Latifa’s behalf using his DBS account, receiving a total of S$177,270.86 from outside Singapore into his account between Nov 7, 2020 and Feb 10, 2021.
He then used these funds either to purchase and transfer bitcoins or transferred them to various bank accounts under Latifa’s directions.
The court heard that, throughout this time, Lim had suspected that Latifa was scamming people and that she was using him for money laundering.
In his messages with her, he had even confronted her about his suspicions.
However, as she promised him that she would marry him if he continued to “help” her move money, he continued doing so.
Details of his crimes came to light on Feb 5, 2021, after an accountant of Singapore company Turbo Solutions lodged a police report, complaining that its client, Swan Shipping had fallen victim to an email impersonation scam.
The Philippines-based company had received fraudulent emails – purportedly from Turbo Solutions – that provided it with fraudulent wire transfer instructions.
Swan Shipping complied with the fraudulent instructions, resulting in a total of S$9,075 being transferred to Lim’s bank account on Jan 11, 2021.
While Latifa told Lim that the monies belonged to her, he had reason to believe the property to be stolen property, according to court documents.
Nonetheless, he agreed to receive the funds on her behalf in his DBS account, as he wanted to marry her.
Following her instructions, he transferred a total of S$9,000 to a bank account with the remaining S$75 similarly dissipated afterwards.
Shortly after receiving the police report from Turbo Solutions on Feb 5, 2021, the Commercial Affairs Department seized the balance sum in the DBS account, which amounted to S$79.38. This has since been returned to Lim.
To date, the 34-year-old has not made any restitution, and the police have also not been able to identify and trace Latifa.
On Thursday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Ngia sought a sentence of between one and two months’ jail, given the level of Lim’s culpability and harm caused by his offence.
“The accused not only had strong reasons to believe that he would be facilitating the movement of criminal proceeds on Latifa’s behalf, he had suspected so. He suspected Latifa to be a scammer,” said Mr Ngia in his submission.
“However, we balance the above with the fact that there is no evidence of him enjoying personal benefits for his involvement. He committed the offence because he was promised marriage by the online persona ‘Latifa’ in return for his ‘help’.”
Mr Ngia added that the offence was premeditated as he had been earlier cautioned by the police not to continue helping Latifa move monies and had real suspicions that she was a scammer but continued to receive and transfer them on her behalf.
“The accused had thus committed the offence with his eyes wide open, and the offence is far from a moment of folly,” he said.
For receiving stolen property, Lim could have been jailed for up to five years and/or fined.
