- Joined
- Apr 9, 2009
- Messages
- 3,070
- Points
- 0
HE WOULD pass himself off as a rich and high-flying professional and befriend unsuspecting women.
Once he had gained their trust, he would fleece them of their money. Despite the law catching up with Singaporean Kevin Ong Siu Sin, 41, several times, he continued his swindling ways.
He started his life of crime in Singapore and was fined and jailed here for cheating and theft. He then moved to Hong Kong, where he continued to prey on other women.
Ong was so notorious that some hotels and nightspots in the city blacklisted him. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to 41/2 years' jail by the Hong Kong District Court for cheating two women, whom he was dating at the same time, of about HK$100,000 (S$16,400).
Ong was earlier convicted of 15 counts of fraud and theft. Checks by The New Paper revealed that he had several similar previous convictions in Hong Kong and Singapore, dating as far back as 1990.
China Daily (Hong Kong Edition) reported on Thursday that the court heard that Ong went around claiming to be a brother of Dah Sing Bank Chairman David S YWong.
'Cambridge' graduate
He also claimed to be a Cambridge University graduate and would present himself as a successful professional. The facade was actually maintained by spending on credit cards stolen from his girlfriends.
Ong's life of crime began in July 1990, when he was a national serviceman. He was fined $1,000 for cheating an Indonesian woman into paying for more than $10,000 of expenses incurredby him at the Westin Plaza Hotel.
Ong had told the 20-year-old woman that he was the son of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman and had lost his wallet containing his credit cards. In 1998, Ong struck again. He met a woman at a pub on Oct 15.
Two days later, they watched a movie together. After the movie, Ong invited the woman to a pub for drinks. But after chalking up a bill of $129, Ong told the woman he did not bring his wallet and was waiting for his brother to turn up. So she paid first.
They later went to another pub where Ong claimed his brother had reservations. When the woman went to the toilet, Ong stole her credit card from her handbag, which he later tried to use to pay the bill.
After he was found out, he was charged for theft and cheating and sentenced to three months' jail in 2001.
District Judge Eddy Tham had said then: "(Ong) had clearly showed no sign of remorse. He had already been previously convicted ona similar charge but the punishment of a fine had no apparent effect on him. "
Ong moved to Hong Kong in 2001. In February 2006, he met a woman in her mid-30s in an Internet chatroom while claiming to be an international banker with high-level business connections.
They then became lovers. At first, he paid for meals and entertainment but soon began to ask her to lend him money as he was too busy to withdraw cash.
By April 2006, the woman, who earned about HK$17,000 (S$2,780) a month, had lent Ong about HK$8,000 (S$1,310). Ong later gave her a cheque for HK$12,000 (S$1,960), which bounced.
Between May and June, she lent Ong another few thousand dollars and bought a mobile phone for him at his request. By then, she had spent about HK$20,000 (S$3,270) on Ong.
Ong then passed her a cheque for HK$50,000 (S$8,170) and told her to keep the balance. But the cheque could not be banked as it was crossed and made out to cash.
A bank officer later told the court that the bank account Ong had issued the cheque from had already been closed in February 2005. Ong used the same ruse on two other women whom he also met online.
Court papers showed that he had made extravagant claims about his financial and business status, even telling one woman he was the chairman of Dah Sing Bank. He was sentenced to 10 months' jail in May 2009 and his subsequent appeal was dismissed.
As the trial for the case was going on, Ong, while on bail, cheated the owner of a renovation company and stole from a woman. In delivering his judgment for Ong's appeal on March 10 this year, Justice Colin Mackintosh said Ong had "shown himself to be persistently dishonest towards gullible women".
He added: "He continued offending even whilst on trial for one set of offences. He is a menace to such women in respect of whom he has shown himself to be wholly unscrupulous."
Ong didn't just prey on women. In November 2009, the South China Morning Post reported that a man named Anthony Lin had made a police report against Ong.
He said Ong had introduced himself as "David Wang", a high-flying banker who had just left Goldman Sachs in Japan to become the Asian head of a firm called Phoenix Capital. Ong had wanted Mr Lin and his friends to put their money into some dubious investment but he ended up paying for their expensive drinks and meals..
Name-dropping
Mr Lin said: "He (Ong) talks like he's an insider...he's quite charismatic, he flatters you, drops names.
"One of the first things he did when we sat down for lunch...was say he had been mugged the night before. He used that excuse again when it came time to pay the bill."
A female friend then told Mr Lin that "David Wang the banker" sounded a lot like "Damien Wong the plastic surgeon" who had cheated one of her friends. Ong had told the woman that he was one of the world's leading surgeons who had patented an invention which had made him a multi-millionaire.
She ended up paying his HK$42,000 (S$6,860) bill at The Peninsula so he could move to the Four Seasons.
A Four Seasons spokesman told the Post: "We know his background. He can get a room only if he pays cash upfront. We don't accept his credit cards."
A check showed that Ong, who used to own two companies in Singapore, had three bankruptcy petitions filed against him here in the 1990s.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
