Public Prosecutor v Ng Kok Hian

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Wong Keen Onn
• Judgment Date: 29 April 2005
• Neutral Citation: [2005] SGDC 101
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Year: 2005
• Published date: 10 August 2005
• Plaintiff Counsel: Eddy Tham (Deputy Public Prosecutor)
• Defendant Counsel: Thomas Tham (Thomas Tham and Co)
• Citation: [2005] SGDC 101

29 April 2005

District Judge Wong Keen Onn

The Charges

1. The Accused pleaded guilty to ten charges (DAC 56123/04, DAC 512/05, DAC 513/05, DAC 516/05, DAC 517/05, DAC 518/05, DAC 519/05, DAC 525/05, DAC 526/05 and DAC 4249/05) of abetment by conspiracy to cheat under s 109 r/w s 420 Penal Code, Chapter 224. A copy of the 27^th charge which is similar to the nine other proceeded charges, except for the amounts cheated and the victims, is reproduced below:

“DAC 513/2005 (Exhibit P2A)

You, Ng Kok Hian (Male/47 years old)

NRIC No: S1276129E

are charged that you, on or about the 4^th day of October 2004, in Singapore, did abet the offence of cheating, to wit, did engage with Koh Kai Siang, Lee Pik Siong, Liew Swee Fatt, Tan Joo Li and others unknown in a conspiracy to do a certain thing, namely, to cheat, and in pursuance of the conspiracy and in order to the doing of that thing, an act took place, to wit, an application for vehicle hire purchase was submitted by Koh Kai Siang on 4^th October 2004 to one Poh Siew Siew, the Approving Officer of GE Money Pte Ltd, located at 20 Collyer Quay Tung Centre #11-01, Singapore, which represented that one Lee Pik Siong is a Marketing Manager with Channel Design Consultants drawing a monthly salary of $5054/- in which Lee Pik Siong was named as the hirer, when you knew such income information given was false, and by such manner of deception, you dishonestly induced the said Poh Siew Siew to approve and disburse the said vehicle loan of S$90,000/- for SDU 2210P to Car City Leasing Pte Ltd, and you have thereby abetted an offence of cheating, which offence was committed in consequence of your abetment, and you have thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 109 read with Section 420 of the Penal Code, Chapter 224.”

2. Upon his conviction on these ten charges, accused consented to thirty four other similar charges under section 109 read with section 420 of the Penal Code, Chapter 224 to be taken into consideration for sentencing.

The Facts

3. The accused admitted without qualification to the Statement of Facts, Exhibit B. The accused is one Ng Kok Hian, aged 47 years. He is commonly known as “Sunny”. The facts revealed that the accused got to know one Koh Kai Siang Simon (“Simon”) who had the means to arrange for sales of vehicles. Subsequently, accused conspired with Simon to hatch a scheme to cheat.

4. The scheme was that the accused, acting as the main administrator of the syndicate, will look for individuals to act as end-users. These individuals would provide their particulars to be submitted to act as hirers for vehicle hire purchase loans to the banks and financial institutions in return of a promised commission. The accused would get the individuals to pass off as if they were under gainful employment earning substantial income. Under the administration by the accused, fake employment letters, fake IR8A and other fake employment certifications or documents were provided to the banks and financial institutions to support the end-users’ applications for vehicle hire-purchase loans. The accused and Simon also conspired with various sole-proprietors and directors, requesting them to falsely verify with the financial institutions should their officers call to check on the employment status of the end-users. Some of them were also requested to produce employment letters that falsely claimed that certain person was gainfully employed in their company.

5. Most of the vehicle hire-purchase applications were submitted to the financial institutions through Simon. Upon the approval of the vehicle hire-purchase applications, Simon would give the accused varying amounts of commissions ranging from S$500 to S$3000 for cases which Simon was involved. The accused would then give a portion of the commission to the end-users as a form of reward. If the end-users do not wish to use the vehicles, Sunny would take possession and rent them out under a company by the name of Buzz Enterprise operated and managed by him. The vehicle hire-purchase loans were all dishonestly obtained and the monthly installments for these vehicles had been defaulted.

6. Investigations revealed that a total of five financial institutions fell prey to the accused’s scam. They were GE Money Pte Ltd, NTUC Income Insurance Cooperative Ltd, OCBC Bank, Tokyo Leasing (S) Pte Ltd and Malayan Banking Berhad. The pertinent details relating to the ten proceeded charges are tabulated below:

DAC No; Charge	Vehicle No	Name of Hirer/ Accomplice	Amount of loan cheated	Approving officer cheated
56123/04; (1st charge)	SDM 539Y	Ng Kok Boon	$66,000	Angela Chan; Shee Ying
512/05; (26th charge)	SDS 5468U	Tan Kee Chai	$72,000	Kenzo Ogiwara
513/05; (27th charge)	SDU 2210P	Lee Pik Siong	$90,000	Poh Siew; Siew
516/05; (30th charge)	SFM 7030C	Kho Kok Heng	$74,000	Jackson Ong
517/05; (31st charge)	SFM 5568G	Yong Yoong Kim	$75,000	Jackson Ong
518/05; (32nd charge)	SFP 2593L	Lau Seng Hock	$145,000	Jackson Ong
519/05; (33rd charge)	SFM 6956M	Yeo Kee Hua	$111,000	Jackson Ong
525/05; (39th charge)	SFJ 7138S	Lee Yuet Foon	$68,000	Kenzo Ogiwara
526/05; (40th charge)	SFM 2253J	Tan Chin Guan	$68,000	Jackson Ong
4249/05; (43rd charge)	SDR 6259P	Ng Tien Chye	$65,000	Kenzo Ogiwara

The total amount of loans cheated in the proceeded charges is $834,000. Altogether for the 44 charges, the total amount deceived from the banks pursuant to this scam was $2,642,100. The total loss incurred by the financial institution after repossessing the vehicles and resale amounted to $422,993.58 for the ten proceeded charges. For the remaining charges taken into consideration the amount of losses sustained by the bank and financiers after repossessing the vehicles in the defaulting loan was $690,698.53, thus giving a total loss incurred by the victims for all charges to be at $1,113,092.11.

Accused’s Antecedents

7. The accused admitted to the following antecedents and previous convictions as listed in the table below:

Date	Offence	Sentence
21.1.1983	S 18(1)(c) Cap 259 Providing public entertainment against conditions	Fined $120
24.8.1983	S 56(1)(c) Cap 81 Conveying prohibited immigrants (TIC 1 count under s 56(1)(c) Cap 81	Fined $900
22.10.1988	4 counts of cheating under s 420 Penal Code r/w s 34 Penal Code (TIC 9 counts of cheating under s 420 r/w s 34 PC, 2 counts of cheating by personation under s 419 PC, 1 count of failing to report change of address under s 13(1)(b) Cap 257 and 1 count of criminal breach of trust under s 406 Penal Code.	Total of 8; months’ impt
29.12.1988	1 count of Reg 39 Enlistment Regulation for loss of contact with CMPB 1 count of failing to comply with order issued under Enlistment Act under s 32(a) Cap 93	Fined $500 i/d 25 days (not paid) Fined $400 i/d 20 days (not paid)
5.4.1991	1 count of failing to fulfill NS liability under s 32(b) Cap 93	Fined $800
30.7.1993	10 counts of corruption under s 5(a) PCA. (TIC 3 counts of corruption under s 5(a) PCA and 1 count of criminal misappropriation under s 403 Penal Code)	Total of 54 months’ impt
1.9.2001	1 count of forgery for purpose of cheating under s 468 Penal Code 1 count of causing deaths by rash or negligent act under s 304A of Penal Code Rash riding under s 279 of Penal Code 1 count of failing to report accident under s 84(2) Cap 276 1 count under s 84(3) Cap 276 1 count of destroying evidence in case of road accident under s 84(4) Cap 276 1 count of s 35(1) Cap 276 1 count under s 65B Cap 276 1 count under s 3(1)(c) Cap 189 1 count of cheating under s 419 of Penal Code	Total of 2 yrs 11 months’ impt

Mitigation

8. Defence Counsel tendered in a written mitigation plea. In his mitigation plea, counsel said the scheme was hatched by the accomplice Simon and the accused followed suit as he wanted to make extra income. The accused only earned about $1,000 per car on the average after distributing the ill-gotten gains to the car salesman who assisted him to get the “buyers” or “hirer” of the cars and also to the hirers of the car themselves. The accused stated he had regretted committing the offence. Besides being cooperative with the police after his arrest, he had also pleaded guilty to the charges at the first instance. According to counsel, he has to support his 80 year old mother.

Prosecution submission

9. The prosecution did not address the Court on sentence but informed the court that the accused is a co-mastermind. The DPP highlighted that the accused had together with Simon, came out with this cheating scam.

Reasons for sentence

10. Given that the accused’s age, his previous convictions and the nature and magnitude of his present offences, this was potentially a case to consider either corrective training or preventive detention. A pre-sentence report for corrective training and preventive detention (‘the PD/CT report’) was then called for.

11. The PD/CT report confirmed that he was mentally and physically fit to undergo preventive detention or corrective training. In the PD/CT report, the prison psychologist had assessed the accused’s general risk of recidivism as being in the moderate to high risk category, with a 49 to 68 per cent chance of recidivism within two years of release.

12. The principal aim of corrective training is, as the name suggests, to reform the prisoner who is sentenced to undergo that regime. It is to turn an offender away from the easy allure of crime by putting him through a regime of discipline and by providing him with certain work skills. This is only appropriate and suitable where the offender shows that he is capable of reform and can be corrected, so to...