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Woman jailed 78 months for foreign exchange cheating case involving US$1m
Published on Sep 30, 2013
By Elena Chong
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An unemployed woman was jailed for 61/2 years on Monday for deceiving a friend into believing that she could get better foreign exchange rates for two sums of US$500,000.
Aileen Neo, 48, admitted to two counts of duping Mr Hia Chye Kiang, 59, into believing that she was able to exchange $650,000 for US$500,000 and $675,000 for the second similar amount in September 2011.
A district court heard that the money belonged to Soon Kim Hardware Trading, which deals with recycling metal products and buys copper as part of its business to export to China. Mr Hia's wife, Ms Koh Gek Hwang, 50, worked as an accounts clerk at Soon Kim. The couple were close to Neo as they both dabbled in commodity trading and frequently met for coffee or meals.
In September 2011, Ms Koh asked her husband to check with Neo if she was able to get better foreign currency exchange rates for US dollars as Soon Kim needed to convert a total of US$1 million ($1.3 million then) to Singapore dollars. A few days later, Neo lied to Mr Hia that she could get $650,000 for US$500,000. After Mr Hia had handed over the US$500,000 cheque to Neo at Toa Payoh Hub, she gave him a POSB cheque for $650,000 linked to her account with insufficient funds.
Get the full story from The Straits Times.
