Two men charged in court for receiving stolen money in Chinese officials impersonation scams

SINGAPORE — Two men were charged in the District Court on Wednesday (June 6) for dishonestly receiving stolen money by allegedly impersonating Chinese officials in phone scams.

Court documents showed that Poon Hong Kuan, 17, and Chow Zhi Hong, 33 — both Malaysians — allegedly received stolen money worth S$100,000 in cash from another Malaysian national Chow Wai Chung, 18, who was charged last Saturday in connection to the scams.

Both Poon and Chow, who are unemployed, committed the offence last Friday and were arrested on Monday following investigations into two police reports lodged by victims.

The victims reported that they handed over their money after they were duped into thinking they were involved in a transnational money laundering crime. One of them was a 55-year-old housewife, who handed over S$310,000 of her savings over two days.

The three Malaysian men were involved in a ruse that saw the police seizing S$590,000, the largest amount involved in such scams.

The Police said earlier that investigations are still ongoing to establish the identities of other victims, as well as perpetrators in the syndicate.

Poon and Chow, who were not offered bail, are now remanded at the Central Police Division for further investigations, and will appear in court again on June 13.

If found guilty of receiving stolen property, they can be jailed up to five years and fined.

The trio are not the first to be nabbed in connection to impersonation scams of Chinese officials. In March, two Taiwanese men aged 24 and 25, Wang Wei Ciang and Wang Wei-Ming, were handed jail sentences of three years and three and a half years respectively for their roles as money mules.

They collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from the victims and delivered the money to the syndicate. They each admitted to one count of dishonestly receiving and handing over the cash.