- Joined
- Jan 18, 2010
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- 48
Justin has added in his blog post that a manager from the Asia Media Group called to clarify the incident, stating that Joan is in fact a valid staff and that AMG is a legitimate company that has been doing these awards for close to nine years. Justin has also been invited to the Awards in May to clear his doubts. The manager I contacted, Kelly, said that AMG is in fact a company with an established reputation in the country, citing the patronage of certain Members-of-Parliament.
Justin Lee, founder of Singapore-based tuition agency Ace Tutors, was shocked when a self-proclaimed journalist from the ‘Asia Business Journal’ came to his office last December to inform him that he had won an entrepreneurship award.
The catch? He’ll have to fork out S$3,888 (US$3,100) in fees for the ‘awards dinner’ and publication purposes.
Something felt off, and he found many reasons to be suspicious of this ‘Joan Chua’.
“The lady had 3D art manicure for her nails that looked ill-fitting for any journalist,” he says, narrating the incident in a blog post.
Furthermore, when Joan passed Justin her namecard, he realized that her contact information had in fact been pasted over another person’s details.
When he asked to keep a copy of the ‘award’ material and an invoice for the fees, she mysteriously declined.
Attempts to contact Joan later were unsuccessful.
According to Justin, Joan said that her company, Asia Media Group, organized the Circle of Excellence awards in 2010, targeted at the real estate industry.
She added that her firm will be organizing an ‘Asia Pacific Brand Awards’, with 100 companies in Singapore being feted. Among the winners, he was told, include Adam Khoo Learning Technologies, StarTutor.sg, Young Scholars, Bioskin, and more.
The event was slated to be held in June 2012 at the HDB Hub in Toa Payoh, and a Member-of-Parliament was slated to hand out the awards.
It’s unclear at this point whether this Joan is truly a representative of Asia Media Group, or a con artist masquerading as one (Update: see above). Other than some cover images of the Asia Business Journal on the website, no other information could be found online.
Justin has reported the incident to the police, and was told that they would follow up if the case was serious enough.
He has not heard from them since.
