Former OCBC financial consultant admits to cheating clients of S$170,000 in fake time deposits

SINGAPORE: A former financial consultant with OCBC Singapore cheated five of his clients of S$170,000 in fake time deposits, picking existing clients whom he knew were not technologically savvy and who would trust his explanations.

Hoi Wei Kit, 34, pleaded guilty on Monday (Jan 17) to seven charges of cheating, acquiring benefits of criminal conduct and giving false information to a public servant. Another 13 charges will be considered in sentencing.

The court heard that Hoi was a financial consultant at OCBC from October 2015 to April 2018. He sold insurance and investment products to clients and helped individuals open OCBC bank accounts.

Hoi was a gambler. He managed to address the problem between 2014 and 2017, but began gambling again in September 2017, amassing debts in a month's time.

In a bid to pay off his gambling and personal debts, Hoi devised a scheme to defraud his existing bank clients.

OCBC Singapore would occasionally introduce promotions for investment products that were typically available for a limited time, for financial consultants like Hoi to sell to clients.

Hoi identified five existing clients who were not tech-savvy, knowing they would rely on his explanations if they signed up for financial products. Three of them were aged 60 and above at the time of the offences.

Hoi then targeted them by telling them they were eligible for a promotional time deposit with attractive interest rates of either 8.8 per cent or 11.88 per cent.

He took into account several factors, such as the types of forms needed and which account to transfer the victims' funds to. 

To avoid involving branch officers in his scheme and risk discovery, Hoi transferred his victims' funds to his colleagues before having them transferred to him or handed over in cash.

He would lie to his colleagues about why money was being transferred to their accounts, before asking him to transfer the cash to him.

One of the victims visited an OCBC branch on Apr 9, 2018, requesting to withdraw her fixed deposit of S$30,000 which she had placed with Hoi in January 2018.

The bank branch manager lodged a police report a few days later, saying that internal investigations showed there was no such deposit placed in the victim's name.

The bank interviewed Hoi, who admitted that he had defrauded five customers of various amounts totalling S$170,000.

While Hoi was being investigated for the bank offences, he began working as an interior designer for his cousin's company.

On Nov 9, 2018, he lodged a false police report claiming that he had left behind a black sling bag containing cash of $12,350 in a Grab taxi.

The cash was purportedly money that he had collected from his clients a few days earlier.

Hoi claimed he contacted Grab, but was told that the Grab driver had not seen his bag. Because of his police report, the police investigated the case, interviewing the Grab driver and going down to Hoi's new company.

Police camera footage was retrieved from various locations including the vicinity of Hoi's home. He was shown leaving home without any black sling bag, and he admitted to the police in December 2018 that he had not lost the bag or cash.

Instead, he used the money to pay his outstanding debts to illegal moneylenders, and filed the police report so he could tell his cousin that the money was lost.

The prosecutor called for at least 30 months' jail, saying that a deterrent sentence is warranted to send a strong signal to other members of the financial services industry that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

OCBC Singapore suffered economic and reputational harm, said the prosecutor, adding that it made restitution to the victims.

Hoi carefully selected his victims, so that it would be easier for him to cheat them. He also had a modus operandi and abused his position of trust.

His false police report also led to the wastage of public resources, as the police spent "quite a significant amount of time conducting interviews and searching for CCTV footage".

He will return to court for sentencing next month.