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AN ASSISTANT manager of a fast-food restaurant posed as a monk and then as an anti-corruption officer to cheat a pair of National Environment Agency (NEA) officials he was told were under probe for suspected graft.
Fong Wei Yang, 24, admitted to conspiring with his alleged accomplice Thuraisamy Senthi to deceive Mr Koh Gan Pore, an NEA senior technical officer, in September 2009.
The pair, who fraudulently netted $9,000, also tried unsuccessfully to cheat then-NEA higher technical officer Mohamad Santosa Suratim.
Acting on instructions from Senthi, also an NEA technical officer, Fong phoned Mr Koh on Sept 12 that year, posing as a monk from the Loyang Tua Pek Kong Temple and solicited a donation of $1,000.
Mr Koh obliged him.
Ten days later, Fong again contacted the NEA official, but this time, lied that he was an officer from the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) who would, for $1,000, favourably influence ongoing investigations into the allegation that Mr Koh was taking bribes.
Mr Koh transferred the amount into a specified bank account.
That month, Fong also posed as a CPIB officer to try and deceive Mr Mohamad Santosa into handing over $10,000 in exchange for influencing the investigations purportedly being carried out by the anti-graft agency against him. |
But Mr Mohamad Santosa, disbelieving the story, did not hand over any money.
Both he and Mr Koh, then attached to the mechanical maintenance unit of Tuas South Incineration Plant, had been the subjects of a complaint the CPIB received in June that year, alleging that they were accepting bribes from contractors of the Government-owned plant.
Mr Koh committed suicide in October that year, during the investigations.
Fong, who admitted to two charges of cheating and one of attempted cheating, had three other charges taken into consideration.
Of the $9,000 he milked from Mr Koh, he got $2,300; the balance went to his alleged accomplice and into settling their gambling debts.
Senthi’s case has yet to be heard.
Fong’s lawyer R. S. Wijaya said his client knew neither Mr Koh nor Mr Mohamad Santosa, and spoke to them only on the phone.
Mr Wijaya added that his client had been influenced by Senthi, whom he had known for about six years.
But Deputy Public Prosecutor Adrian Ooi, asking the court to jail Fong, said his acts of impersonation were an insult to the country and to CPIB officers, and had sullied the reputation of the anti-corruption agency.
District Judge Low Wee Ping, who jailed Fong for 14 weeks in all, agreed that the fact that Fong had posed as a CPIB officer was not only a devious offence, but that it was cruel of him to take advantage of Mr Koh’s situation then when he was under investigation.
Fong could have been jailed up to three years and/or fined on each charge.
