Man jailed, caned after posing as woman to extort S$10,000 from colleague with ‘weakness for women’

• Sarvanan Ellankovan learnt of his colleague’s weakness for women and large insurance payout 
• He hatched a plan with his friend Rajakumar Sumugam to extort the colleague of S$10,000
• Sarvanan did so by first pretending to be a woman and then obtaining lewd images from the victim

SINGAPORE — During a drinking session with his co-workers last year, Sarvanan Ellankovan overheard his friend Rajakumar Sumugam saying that a colleague of theirs had recently received a large insurance payout.

Having also learnt of the man’s weakness for women, Sarvanan hatched a plan with Rajakumar to extort their colleague of S$10,000.

Both men, who are Malaysians, were charged with one count of extortion.

On Monday (Nov 22), Sarvanan, 36, pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to two years and three months’ imprisonment, along with one stroke of the cane.

The sentence was backdated to Dec 8 last year, the date Sarvanan and Rajakumar, now 50, were arrested.

Sarvanan has been in remand since then, though it was not stated in court whether Rajakumar has been released on bail.

Rajakumar’s case is still before the court.

The name of the now 51-year-old victim of the duo’s extortion attempt was not disclosed in court documents.

THE CONSPIRACY

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Victoria Ting told the court that the extortion case came to light when the victim filed a police report on Dec 7 last year.

Investigations found that plans to extort the victim started brewing on Nov 14 last year when Sarvanan and a few other Malaysian workers were drinking and chatting.

Rajakumar and the other workers were talking about the victim’s “weakness for women” and how he had received a large insurance payout, DPP Ting said, but she did not state how much the payout was.

This conversation was overheard by Sarvanan, who then asked Rajakumar for the victim’s phone number with the intention of pretending to be a woman to play a prank on the victim.

DPP Ting said that Sarvanan and Rajakumar “entered into a conspiracy to extort money from the victim” a few days later.

Posing as a woman named “Priya”, Sarvanan began sending text messages via the messaging platform WhatsApp to the victim on Nov 24.

During the course of the conversation, Sarvanan “started flirting” with the victim, DPP Ting said.

This led to Sarvanan, under the guise of Priya, sending nude photographs of women he had obtained online to the victim on Nov 30.

Under the impression that these photos were of Priya, and that “she” was flirting with him, the victim responded by sending eight nude photographs of himself and three intimate videos of himself that showed his face and private parts.

Sarvanan then saved these images to a thumb drive.

With their plans progressing, Rajakumar told Sarvanan on Dec 1 to call the victim under the guise of Priya’s husband.

Using his Malaysian phone number, Sarvanan did so and identified himself as “Saran”, the husband of Priya.

He then confronted the victim for “flirting with his wife” and demanded a payment of S$10,000 to settle the matter.

If the victim failed to pay up, Sarvanan threatened to damage his reputation by leaking the nude photographs and intimate videos he had sent.

The threat was enough to get the victim to transfer a total of S$4,000 over two transactions of S$3,000 and S$1,000 to Sarvanan’s bank account.

Of this amount, Sarvanan gave S$1,100 to Rajakumar.

On Dec 8, Sarvanan demanded that the victim pay another S$5,000, but the victim responded that he did not have such money. It was not stated if Sarvanan was taking on the role of Priya or Saran this time round.

All the same, he threatened the victim by stating that Priya’s younger brother was a gangster and would seek him out.

DPP Ting said that there was “no further communication” between Sarvanan and the victim after that.

To date, Sarvanan has not made any restitution to the victim.

The penalty for anyone found guilty of extortion is a jail term of up to seven years and caning.