SINGAPORE: A director of several car trade-related companies ran a million-dollar scheme deceiving banking institutions into issuing financing by using false documentation of transactions, resulting in massive losses by the banks.
Ho Yik Fuh, 57, was sentenced to 15 years’ jail on Wednesday (Sep 13) to have an assortment of charges which includes cheating and falsifying documents.
His accomplice and supplier, 61-year-old Yeo Kee Siah, was sentenced to 40 months’ jail for his role.
Each men had contested the charges plus were found accountable at close associated with trial.
The particular court heard that Ho ran Frankel Motor, Frankel Renting and Supreme Motor, operating a seite an seite import car selling business through these companies.
Yeo was obviously a director in Blue Motor Works, the supplier of seite an seite imported cars in order to Ho’s Frankel group of companies.
Ho had an arrangement along with Ho such that most of the cars imported straight into Singapore by Yeo were parked on Frankel Motor’s storage facilities. The storekeeper of Frankel Motor would take over the cars and receive one particular key for each vehicle.
Under this arrangement, even though Frankel Motor had not officially purchased the cars, the organization could offer the vehicles for sale to their clients.
If the vehicles were sold, Yeo would be informed and earmark the cars in the records as previously being booked by Frankel Motor. Yeo would certainly issue invoices for that cars booked simply by Frankel Motor depending on whether any of the companies in the Frankel team had available credit score in its lines of financing with the banking institutions.
To financial the Frankel group of companies, Ho requested various loans through different banks and companies. Among these were the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), VTB Bank European countries Plc, Bank of East Asia (BEA) and GE Cash.
To obtain funding from these banks, different documents had to be posted, including documents showing evidence that cars were delivered to one of the Frankel group’s businesses, or that the organization had to pay the supplier for the cars.
Between 2006 and 2007, Ho and Yeo fooled banks into providing financing to the Frankel group of companies for that purchase of vehicles from various suppliers, when in fact there were no cars delivered in accordance with the bills and delivery records provided to the banks.
Ho robbed three banks by using double financing – getting financing two times for the same goods — and post-dated funding, by using documents displaying that the cars were delivered on a particular date when in fact they had been shipped some time before.
Yeo helped Ho by issuing files to facilitate each types of financing.
“The fraud perpetrated on the three banks resulted in massive failures, as the Frankel group of companies went under and could not create repayment of the outstanding loans, ” stated the prosecutor.
“The banks were also left out of pocket, as the dual financing and post-dated financing meant how the loans, which were meant to have been secured simply by floating charges on the cars which should have been within the assets of the Frankel group of companies, were in fact unsecured as the fundamental cars had already been sold to end-buyers or were already under other funding which took priority, ” he said.
The total amount in Ho’s charges is about S$14. 2 million. Of this, Yeo’s involvement is at about S$3. 5 million.
VTB was robbed into disbursing S$2. 7 million, OCBC was cheated into disbursing S$1. 09 million and BEA disbursed about S$659, 000.
Ho also cheated Wirana Worldwide into entering a financing arrangement for Frankel Electric motor over non-existent imported cars. Losses of approximately S$9. 7 mil was caused in order to Wirana Worldwide over 29 instances of financing.
The prosecutor said the accidents are a reflection associated with “a troubling, however persistent, climate in the Singapore business local community where trade financing scams are seen being a convenient way to tide businesses through cashflow problems”.