SINGAPORE: A serial conman scammed 396 victims upon online marketplace Carousell over 18 months, leading to losses totalling S$108, 693 (RM348, 228).
The prosecution said Caine Poh Zhenlong’s case involved the largest scale of ecommerce fraud dedicated by an individual up to now in Singapore.
On Wednesday (Aug 31), Poh has been sentenced to five years’ jail as well as a fine of S$17, 000 (RM54, 464) after he pleaded guilty to 2 counts of cheating involving more than S$87, 000 (RM278, 728) and five costs involving unlawful betting activities.
An additional nine charges, which includes one count of cheating involving some S$21, 000 (RM67, 274), were regarded during sentencing.
Poh will spend an additional 10 weeks behind bars when he is unable to pay the fine.
The court heard that Poh came across news articles within 2018 on sufferers who had been cheated on Carousell. He made a decision to commit similar offences and registered several Carousell accounts.
As the registration process for a Carousell account required a mobile phone number, Poh published on multiple Fb groups to ask if anyone needed work.
After receiving responses, he informed the jobseekers that he needed their mobile phone numbers, which he then used to register the Carousell accounts.
He also inquired the jobseekers for your one-time-password that was sent to their devices to register the accounts.
Poh then told the jobseekers to await for his response but did not return to any of them.
To carry out his fraud, Poh posted commercials on Carousell purporting to sell various products. Most of them were tickets to attractions, particularly Universal Studios Singapore as he had noticed many people were looking to purchase them on the platform.
Between January 1 and December 28, 2019, Poh duped multiple sufferers into believing he previously items for sale, resulting in them transferring greater than S$76, 000 (RM243, 487) to various bank details.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Shao Yan told the court: “As section of his deception, the particular accused sent a few of the victims fake seat tickets by email. He or she created these tickets by retrieving pictures of the tickets from the Internet and editing the particular ticket details.
“Thereafter, he sent the edited tickets to the victims plus informed them they were valid etickets. ”
After deceiving his sufferers, Poh instructed them to transfer money to bank accounts belonging to on the internet casinos which this individual frequented.
He then gambled with the money and transferred their winnings to bank details belonging to his mother and late father, which he had full control of.
Utilizing a similar method, Poh cheated more sufferers of over S$11, 000 (RM35, 241) between Jan one and June 14, 2020. The police received numerous reports in regards to the offences.
Poh was caught in a surprise raid with his home upon June 16, 2020.
Defence lawyer S. Balamurugan informed the court upon Wednesday that his client cheated their victims to energy his gambling habit. Citing a medical report, he mentioned Poh has a severe gambling disorder, which usually contributed to their offences.
Arguing against the defence’s declaration, DPP Ng mentioned: “As stated within the report, his cheating offences provided ‘means to enable him to possess a chance to gamble and win’. This would not qualify as an immediate causal link to their cheating offences. ”
Poh has not made any restitution to his sufferers.
For each depend of cheating, a good offender can be jailed for up to 10 years plus fined. – The particular Straits Times (Singapore)/Asia News Network