Ren Ci and Ming Yi - court sentencing

Disgraced monk and former head of charity Ren Ci, Ming Yi, has just been sentenced to 10 months' jail and his assistant Raymond Yeung was sentenced to 9 months. They were both found guilty of several charges related to a unauthorised loan of $50,000 made to Yeung. Many of the charges related to the covering up of the loan such as making false statements to the Commissioner of Charities and creating a false payment voucher. This case is another example of where if the defendants had admitted their wrong when first discovered instead of covering it up, they may well have escaped jail sentences. However, as is often the case, the cover up offences were more numerous than the original offence.

The judge was not impressed with Ming Yi's alleged sacrifices for the charity although a strong mitigation plea was made by his Senior Counsel Andre Yeap. An aggravating factor was that there were numerous acts of trying to cover up the unauthorised loan. Also taken into account was that public trust in the charity system was affected by such acts.

A contrast can be drawn with the case of TT Durai, former Chief Executive Office of the National Kidney Foundation. He was sentenced to a jail term of 3 months under the Prevention of Corruption Act in relation to an incorrect voucher which mischaracterized commission paid to a fund raiser. However, in Durai's case, there was no loss caused to the charity. In Ming Yi's case, the loan was repaid only after investigations had begun.

More jail for dishonest lawyer

Leong Wai Nam, who stole over $93,000 of clients' money, had his jail sentence increased from 3 years, 8 months to 6 1/2 years on appeal to the High Court. Justice Tay Yong Kwang agreed that a stiff sentence was needed to stop the increasing number of dishonest lawyers stealing clients' money.

Leong had pocketed the monies instead of banking them with various other law firms with whom he had revenue sharing arrangements. In addition, he had deceived a businessman by pretending that he could act for the latter even though Leong had no practising certificate.

Confession but no corruption conviction

A marine surveyor, Anuar Ahmad, was acquitted for corruption recently. He had been charged with taking a $500 bribe for overlooking a short supply of bunkers (fuel) to a ship. During investigations, he had been told by an Corruption Prevention and Investigation Bureau (CPIB) investigator that if he confessed, he would only be fined and not jailed. Based on this, he confessed to the bribery charge.

During his trial, the judge threw out his confession as it was made under an inducement. The other evidence against him was also rather weak; there were no complaints about the fuel supply. Accordingly, he was acquitted of the charge.

It should be noted that a few years ago, the bunkering industry was hit by a scandal concerning bribes to marine surveyors. They are in charge of checking on the supply of fuel to ships refuelling in Singapore. However, some of them were convicted of taking bribes from fuel suppliers in order to overlook short delivery of fuel or dilution of fuel.


Legal note - under section 24 of the Evidence Act, a confession made under inducement, threat or promise by a person in authority, is inadmissible if the accused was seeking to gain an advantage or avoid an evil.

2 Taiwanese jailed for credit card fraud

2 Taiwanese, Lin Ming-Hung and Huang Cheng-Yu, were jailed for 4 years each for counterfeit credit card offences involving more than $6,000. Although the amount involved is not large, the stiff sentence shows that the courts are determined to punish credit card fraud severely. They each pleaded guilty to 3 charges of having counterfeit cards, 2 charges of abetment to cheat and 11 other charges were taken into consideration.

The accused were part of a syndicate which trained them in fraud techniques such as which goods to purchase, and how to react if the retailer made a call to a bank to check the credit cards. It is understood that their detention was as a result of information provided by Card Security Group Singapore.

The Madoff case

The news is out - Bernie Madoff, who probably created the world's biggest Ponzi scheme, has been sentenced to 150 years jail. It is unlikely that he would even serve 1/5 of that sentence, but with advances in medical science, you never know how long human life expectancies will increase.

Madoff's sentence for his fraud involving perhaps only US$13 billion in monies actually invested with his funds (not US$50 billion claimed by him) is the longest ever awarded by a US court.

In Singapore, on the other hand, the records for the longest sentence for commercial crime and the longest non-life sentence was formerly found in the case of SIA ex-employee Teo Cheng Kiat who was sentenced to 24 years jail. These records are now held by Chia Teck Leng who swindled banks of $117 million while he was finance manager of Asia Pacific Breweries. He was sentenced to 42 years jail in 2004.

If he behaves himself, he can get 1/3 time off for good behaviour, meaning that his sentence might only be 28 years, and he could be out in the year 2032.

Punishment for fraud

The courts take into account many factors in sentencing including the degree of planning, the amount of money involved and the restitution made (in other words, whether the criminal has repaid the victim for the loss).

One interesting fact is that if you want to steal a million, from the punishment point of view, it is better to take it all at one go rather than take the amount through several actions. In the first case, it is sometimes possible to argue that it was done in a moment of weakness and the court might be slightly lenient. In the second situation, with repeated offences, the court will note that the acts were done with deliberation and if they took place over a periood of time, the sentence may well be on the high side.