SINGAPORE: A Thai woman who lived decadently after starting a business reselling luxury watches and bags with her Singaporean husband continued charging customers for expensive goods despite running into financial woes and knowing she could not deliver on the items.
When hundreds of police reports involving millions of dollars began stacking up against them, Pansuk Siriwipa and her husband Pi Jiapeng hid in a lorry container and left Singapore.
They were later arrested in Malaysia and taken back to Singapore to face the music, with the amounts across Pansuk’s fraudulent trading charges spanning over S$25 million.
On Tuesday (Oct 29), she was sentenced to 14 years’ jail.
She had pleaded guilty to 30 charges including fraudulent trading and cheating, with another 150 charges taken into consideration.
THE CASE
Pansuk and Pi, who got married in September 2020, started a business called Tradenation, selling luxury watches in Singapore, in May 2021.
They opened a second company, Tradeluxury, around January 2022, to sell luxury bags.
Pansuk was the main decision-maker for both companies, communicating with customers, sourcing for suppliers and arranging for goods deliveries.
Both companies would primarily resell luxury watches or bags on a pre-order basis, offering prices that were 10 to 20 per cent lower than local resellers by getting goods from cheaper overseas suppliers.
From the end of 2021 to the start of 2022, Tradenation began to be plagued with sourcing difficulties due to shipment delays and other issues with the overseas suppliers.
The two companies began operating at a loss.
Pansuk knew from February 2022 that the two firms might not be able to fulfil accepted orders, as they lacked the funds. By the end of that month, the companies were in dire financial straits, with net liabilities of S$1.8 million.
Despite this, she continued to accept orders and payments from customers, using the funds to purchase stock to fulfil earlier orders.
The funds from pre-orders of bags under Tradeluxury were used to fulfil the orders for watches for Tradenation’s customers, and customers were occasionally asked if they wanted to consign purchased goods to the company for sale and “roll” the revenue into their next purchase.
By end-March 2022, the two companies had net liabilities in a deficit of almost S$9 million.
Despite this, Pansuk continued taking orders, cheating customers who made payments for pre-orders.
As a result, 166 victims were cheated of S$12 million for goods they never received.
While both companies were operating at a loss, the couple continued to rack up significant expenditures, funded by their customers.
Pansuk received a salary of S$10,000 a month from Tradenation from January to June 2022 and directed customers’ funds to buy a property worth S$2.4 million in Bangkok in her mother’s name.
She also used S$58,000 to pay for a private jet flight to Bangkok for a holiday, and S$140,000 as down payment for a Corvette in her husband’s name.
Between May and August in 2022, 187 police reports were filed against Pansuk and her husband for unfulfilled luxury item orders made from December 2021 to June 2022.
Pi was arrested on Jun 27, 2022, and released on bail. His passport was surrendered to the police as one of the bail conditions, and Pansuk’s passport was also handed to the police under a different order.
While under investigation, the couple left Singapore illegally due to the rising number of customer complaints.
They met lorry driver Mohamed Alias on Jul 4, 2022, at an industrial park at Ang Mo Kio and later hid in a container compartment in the back of the lorry.
They later went through Tuas Checkpoint without presenting their passports to immigration officers.
A warrant of arrest was issued against them by the State Courts later that month, and the Thai and Malaysian police helped locate the pair in Malaysia on Aug 11, 2022.
They were arrested in Johor Bahru that day, handed over to the Singapore Police Force and remanded since.
The prosecution had sought 14 to 15 years’ jail for Pansuk, while the defence asked for a jail term between 12 years and eight months and 13 years and seven months.
Deputy Public Prosecutor David Koh said Pansuk masterminded a scheme to defraud and cheat a total of 189 victims, and the amounts involved make this “one of the largest scams perpetrated against multiple victims in recent memory”.
“At the same time, she continued to live large and spent the customers’ funds on luxurious items – not the ones promised to her customers, but for herself,” he said.
Defence lawyers Johannes Hadi and Sophia Ng from Eugene Thuraisingam’s law firm said Pansuk is remorseful and eventually informed the person who helped her escape that she would surrender.
They said she asked this man to contact the Royal Thai police and waited outside a hotel in Malaysia for the police to arrest her.
The judge backdated her jail term to August 2022, when she was remanded.
Pi’s case is pending.