Jail for 5 men linked to mortgage loan fraud; bank deceived into disbursing over S$5.1 million
The State Courts building in Singapore. (File photo: CNA TODAY)
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SINGAPORE: Five men have been jailed for their involvement in mortgage loan fraud, which led to a bank disbursing mortgage loans amounting to S$5.16 million for the sale of two properties
The scam was uncovered when the nominee buyers linked to the fraud defaulted on the loan payments.
The five men - Sufandi Ahmad, Bijabahadur Rai Shree Kantrai, Kok Chiew Leong Nicholas, Juma’at Johari and Mohamed Haron Hassan - were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 10 weeks to seven-and-a-half years.
In a media release on Tuesday (Aug 20), the police said Bijabahadur devised the scheme between 2014 and 2015, involving two properties.
They would arrange with the sellers and their agents to sell the property at a price lower than what was stated on the conveyancing documents.
The sellers would then make a cashback payment to the offenders, with the amount equivalent to the difference between the agreed price and the actual stated price.
Juma’at and Haron were the property agents for one of the home sellers, while Kok made a similar arrangement with the seller of the other property.
The offenders then split the money received from the properties among themselves.
FORGED INCOME DOCUMENTS
As part of the conspiracy, Sufandi recruited people to be the purported buyers of these properties.
Forged income documents in the names of these buyers were submitted to the bank in support of the mortgage loan applications, the police said.
The bank then disbursed loans amounting to S$5.16 million for mortgage applications for the two properties.
It incurred a loss of over S$1.79 million on the two properties, the police said.
The fraud was eventually uncovered when the nominee buyers defaulted on the loans.Â
Bijabahadur, 53, received the longest jail term among the five. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years' jail for two counts of cheating and five counts of engaging in a conspiracy to use forged documents.
Sufandi, 44, was convicted of seven similar charges and was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison.
Kok, 51, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years' jail. He was convicted of three charges.
Juma’at and Haron were each convicted of one count of engaging in a conspiracy to fraudulently execute a deed of transfer containing a false statement. They were each sentenced to 10 weeks’ jail.
