Former principal of Zeus Education Centre Poh Yuan Nie. (File photo: TODAY)
Lydia Lam
@LydiaLamCNA25 Nov 2022 11:15AM(Updated: 25 Nov 2022 01:45PM)
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SINGAPORE: A warrant of arrest has been issued for the former principal of a tuition centre who helped students cheat in their O-Level examinations.
The warrant was issued on Wednesday (Nov 23) after Poh Yuan Nie, 56, failed to turn up in court to begin her jail term for 27 counts of cheating.
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Poh had been sentenced to four years' jail in 2020 after a long-running trial, but her appeal was dismissed only this week.
Poh's lawyer, Mr Peter Keith Fernando, discharged himself the same day the warrant was issued for Poh.
Poh was involved in the cheating case with two co-accused: Fiona Poh Min, who received three years' jail, and Feng Riwen, who was given two years and four months' jail.
The trio worked at the now-defunct Zeus Education Centre. They carried out a scheme for three examination papers in October 2016, with six students having devices strapped to their bodies and carefully concealed under layers of clothes.
A few hours before each exam, Fiona and Feng taped the devices on the students. During the exams, co-accused Tan Jia Yan, sat in as a private candidate and used FaceTime on her phone to livestream the question papers back to the tuition centre.
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Fiona and Feng would then work on the questions and call the students to read the answers to them.
The ruse was uncovered when an invigilator heard unusual electronic transmission sounds and voices coming from one of the students.
Poh was labelled by the prosecution as the mastermind of the entire scheme.
As principal, she decided how the operation would be carried out and approved her co-accused's actions, overseeing the entire process on the day of examinations.
Of the four, Tan was the only one who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years' jail in 2019.
O-level cheating case: Apex court rejects arguments that acts did not amount to an offence
The apex court rejected the arguments of former principal Poh Yuan Nie (left) and her niece, former tutor Fiona Poh Min. PHOTOS: ST FILE
Selina Lum
Senior Law Correspondent
PUBLISHED
21 NOV 2022, 6:29 PM SGT
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SINGAPORE - In cases of cheating where the deception involved a “dishonest concealment of facts”, it is not necessary to prove that an offender intended to cause anyone to wrongfully lose or gain property.
The Court of Appeal made the ruling on Monday in a case involving the former principal of a tuition centre who – with the help of three tutors – schemed to help six students cheat in five of their 2016 O-level examination papers.
The apex court rejected the arguments of former principal Poh Yuan Nie and her niece, former tutor Fiona Poh Min.
The duo argued that their conduct was not considered “dishonest” because it did not involve the wrongful gain or loss of property, and therefore they should not be convicted of cheating.
The two women were each convicted in 2020 of 27 charges of engaging in a conspiracy to cheat the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB).
Poh Yuan Nie, who is also known as Pony, was sentenced to four years’ jail, while Fiona Poh was sentenced to three years’ jail.
The charges brought against the pair stated that they had cheated SEAB by “dishonestly concealing the fact” that each student would be receiving assistance from the conspirators.
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Poh Yuan Nie, who was principal of the now-defunct Zeus Education Centre, was paid $8,000 per student to tutor them so that they would pass the exams and enter local polytechnics.
A few hours before each exam, the tutors – Fiona Poh, Tan Jia Yan and Feng Riwen – helped to tape communication devices on the students, who are Chinese nationals.
Tan also sat the exams as a private candidate, and with her mobile phone taped to her chest, provided a live stream of the question papers to her accomplices.
The accomplices then worked on the questions and whispered the answers to the students through their skin-coloured earphones.
Tan was sentenced to three years’ jail, while Feng was sentenced to two years and four months’ jail.
In 2021, Poh Yuan Nie, represented by Mr Peter Fernando, and Fiona Poh, represented by Mr Peter Ong, appealed to the High Court against their convictions and sentences, but failed.
The pair then took the case to the Court of Appeal in a procedure known as a criminal reference, where they sought to have the apex court determine a question of law of public interest.
The issue posed to the court turned on the meaning of the word “dishonest” in the phrase “dishonest concealment of facts”.
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The pair’s lawyers argued that the meaning of “dishonest” has to be determined with reference to the definition of “dishonestly” under Section 24 of the Penal Code.
The provision states that a person is said to do an act dishonestly if he does it with the intention of causing wrongful gain or wrongful loss to another person.
The prosecution argued that a plain or ordinary meaning of “dishonest” should be adopted instead.
In a written judgment on Monday, the apex court agreed with the prosecution that the word “dishonest” must be interpreted as being used in the ordinary sense of the word rather than in the special sense given to it by Section 24 of the Penal Code.
After comparing four possible interpretations, the court concluded that the word “dishonest” describes the mental state of the accused when committing a cheating offence.
The court, which comprised Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justices Judith Prakash and Steven Chong, added that the offence of cheating is not intended to be restricted to instances of deception involving property.
Principal accused of helping students cheat in exams dated a woman without revealing her gender
The principal's name is Pony.By Sukhbir Cheema July 25, 2019
> article
Never trust a person who has Pony for their name. They can take you for a ride.
This is what 33-year-old Tan Jia Yan learned after she recently discovered that the person she was dating was, in fact, a woman.
Pony Poh Yuan Nie did not reveal to Tan that she was a woman during their seven year courtship.
Tan was only 17 years old when she got into a relationship with the 53-year-old some 16 years ago. Their relationship came to an end when Tan discovered that Pony was with another man.
Poh, who worked as a principal at Zeus Education Centre had enlisted Tan to work as a tutor.
Alright, now buckle your seat belt because the story is about to get even more weirder.
Poh is currently on trial together with her niece Fiona Poh Min and a Chinese national named Feng Riwen for helping foreign students cheat at their O-level examinations in 2016.
Tan who is serving a three-year jail sentence had confessed to the courts for being involved in the operations.
Based on a report by Yahoo! News, Tan revealed that she would sit in the exams as a private candidate with a smartphone strapped on her.
Through a Bluetooth device and earpiece, she would send live feed via the Facetime app where Pony and Fiona would work on providing solutions to the problems posed in the question papers.
The answers will then be fed to the students. Yes, the students have Bluetooth devices connected to their mobile phones.
Best part, they're also provided skin-colored earphones which serves as camouflage.
However, an exam supervisor eventually found out on October 24, 2016 when he discovered one of the students during an English paper.
To date, Pony and team are being trialed for assisting students cheat in four subjects: English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry.
The trial is currently ongoing.
Tutor jailed in O-level exam scam claimed being unaware she was in 'lesbian relationship' with principal
Wan Ting Koh
·Senior Reporter
23 July 2019
Photo from Getty Images
SINGAPORE — The principal of a tuition centre who is alleged to have helped foreign students cheat in their O-Level examinations has accused her former lover of lying about the scam due to a grudge after they broke up.
Pony Poh Yuan Nie, 53, had been in a seven-year-relationship with Tan Jia Yan, 33. Tan said in the State Courts on Tuesday (23 July) she had believed that Poh was a man all the while when they were dating.
Tan, who was a tutor at the centre, was jailed three years in April for her involvement in the scam.
Testifying as a prosecution witness, Tan said that Poh, and two others - Poh’s niece Fiona Poh Min, 32, and Chinese national Feng Riwen, 27 - were involved in a sophisticated operation in which six foreign students who were taking the O-Level examinations in 2016 were fed answers.
Poh, Fiona and Feng are denying the offences in a trial which began last year.
“I put to you that the reason you came to court to falsely implicate my client Pony is because you have harboured a deep-seated grudge against Pony because in actual fact she dumped you after a seven-year relationship and you were left helpless,” said Poh’s lawyer, Peter Keith Fernando.
The scam involved Tan sitting for the exams as a private candidate with a smartphone strapped to her body. She would then use the Facetime app to send a live feed of the paper back to the other members of her team. Poh, Fiona and Feng would then allegedly work out the solutions to the answers before feeding them to the students, who would be taking the exams concurrently.
Each student would be equipped with a Bluetooth device which was connected with mobile phones hidden under their clothing, and a skin-coloured earphone through which they would receive the answers.
The exams, conducted between 19 and 24 October 2016, were for Mathematics Paper 1 and 2, English Paper 1 and 2, and the Science Physics/Chemistry Revised Practical Paper.
Thought it was ‘boy and girl’
During cross examination, Fernando asked Tan, “So this was a lesbian relationship?” Tan replied, “I didn’t know it was a lesbian relationship. I thought it was boy and girl.”Tan told the court that she first met Poh when she was 16 years old. Poh was then her tutor.
“Subsequently she initiated a relationship with me, and deceived me that she was a male, so the relationship got on for seven years and after that we broke up,” Tan said.
Tan later became a full-time tutor at Zeus Education Centre, the tuition centre which Poh was in charge of. During their relationship, Poh would take Tan out for dinners, lunches and also gave her gifts. Poh gave her money to take taxis, Tan added.
When asked why the pair broke up, Tan said that it was triggered by a text to Poh from a third party in the relationship.
“For seven years I know there was someone that was involved, Wong Mee Keow, so I was being deceived that there was nothing between Wong and Pony.
“My last straw at the end was when I saw there was a text message, I decided that I should end the relationship,” said Tan.
Wong, the former owner of Pivot Tuition Centre, was fined $2,000 in February 2018 after she admitted to lying to the police in 2006 that she did not know Poh in an attempt to protect her. She and Poh were then in a relationship.
The case came to a standstill and was reopened almost a decade later when Poh was probed for a similar scam.
Tan said, “I saw a message on Pony’s phone, it was sent from (Wong) and it stated ‘I love you’, it was my last straw so I told Pony that I wanted to break up.”
The pair broke up in 2008, a few months before Tan graduated from university.
However, Fernando disagreed with Tan that she was the one who ended the relationship. Instead, Poh was the one who ended the relationship, the lawyer told Tan.
Asked by Fernando if the breakup was emotionally traumatic, Tan replied “yes”. Tan also said she questioned Poh “many times” about her relationship with Wong.
“In the span of seven years… If there is a situation whereby (Wong) would come to the tuition centre, I would have to hide somewhere,” Tan added.
Fernando asked, “You didn’t like what was happening, you couldn’t stomach it?”, to which Tan replied “yes”.
Fernando then said, “My instruction is that everything that you have alleged in testimony regarding Pony’s involvement in assisting students to cheat in examination is a pack of lies by you that you have made up.”
Tan disagreed with Fernando’s statement.
Asked if she felt bitter from the breakup, Tan replied that she felt sad about it. After their relationship ended, Tan said she thought of Poh as a mentor.
The trial resumes its next tranche on 2 September.
