Singaporean jailed seven years for S$3.2m used car scam
Poh Chee Tiong, 61, faced 168 charges, mainly for cheating and forgery.
He was jailed seven years for his offences today.
Poh, an undischarged bankrupt, instructed his wife to incorporate Cars Today and be its sole shareholder and registered director in March 2013.
Behind the scenes though, he handled day to day operations, and was solely in charge of the firm’s finances and disbursement of funds.
Poh’s “systematic and elaborate” scam targeted three groups of victims: Sellers, buyers and finance companies.
He devised a scheme to enable the firm to obtain more credit facilities to purchase more cars.
He also used payment from buyers meant for the transfer of ownership of the secondhand car from seller to buyer for other purposes.
When sellers handed over their car to Cars Today, they were promised that the outstanding loan for the car would be taken care off by the firm.
Instead, the firm never paid up, and sellers ended up saddled with the responsibility of paying off the loan for their sold car.
On some occasions, Cars Today would buy a second-hand car and sell it to a new buyer. But it fooled finance companies into believing a buyer had not been found, and wrangled its way into securing a loan for the car’s outstanding payment.
As part of the loan conditions, the car’s registered ownership would be transferred to the finance company, instead of the new buyer who had already received the car.
Meanwhile, buyers were told that the registered ownership of their newly-bought car would be transferred to them, upon purchase.
But after receiving payment, Cars Today used the money for other expenses and to repay other car loans, instead of processing the transfer of ownership.
In total, 71 buyers, 14 sellers and four finance companies were hoodwinked.
Buyers ended up having their newly-bought cars repossessed by registered owners, whereas sellers had to pay road tax and insurance premiums on their sold cars because ownership had not been transferred.
In one instance, 54-year-old Tan Yew Kong bought a second-hand BMW for about S$146,000 in December 2013.
Days after the sale, Poh applied for a S$122,000 loan from Kenso Leasing, and transferred the ownership to the finance company.
Tan was already in possession of the car by then, and had to pay Kenso over S$73,000 to transfer ownership to his name. In total, he ended up having to pay about $219,000 for his second-hand BMW.
Between December 2013 and December 2014, Poh roped in his son to forge Sales and Purchase Agreements, between Cars Today and sellers.
His son would amend the purchase price on the photocopies of the agreement and mark it up, to receive higher loans from finance companies.
The prosecution said that Poh’s actions had caused monetary harm and inconvenience to his victims.
“General deterrence is required where businesses are being managed in a manner that defrauds unsuspecting customers, especially where heavy losses and great inconvenience have been brought to bear on customers whose trust in those businesses — to deliver what they had promised — has been betrayed,” said deputy public prosecutor Norman Yew.
Poh also knew that he was prohibited by law to manage a company as an undischarged bankrupt, yet he circumvented it by making use of his wife in incorporate Cars Today, said Yew.
His wife and son have both been fined for their parts in the scam.
Defence lawyer Ranadhir Gupta said that his client had used the money received for cheating to grow his business, instead of absconding.
“He’s really into this car business. Sadly, each time he went into it, it wasn’t successful,’ he said.
In her sentencing remarks, District Judge Salina Ishak said that Poh had a high level of culpability, and had crafted a systematic and elaborate plan to cheat customers over a substantial period of time.
Poh’s sentence will be backdated to the start of remand in January this year. — TODAY
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