Ezekiel Loy Wei was sentenced to a total of eight years and four months’ jail, while his mother was sentenced to two years and six months’ jail. - Photo: ST file
SINGAPORE: A man and his mother have been handed jail sentences after a sum of over S$1.2 million was misappropriated from the bank account of a firm the son was a shareholder and director of.
Court documents showed Ezekiel Loy Wei, now 31, had transferred $850,000 from his personal bank account into those belonging to his mother, Gian Juat Ngim, now 61.
Gian, who had reasonable grounds to believe her son was engaged in criminal conduct, later withdrew $400,000 and deposited the amount into her son’s second bank account.
Loy was sentenced to a total of eight years and four months’ jail on Thursday (Dec 18) on one count of criminal breach of trust and more than 30 counts of dealing with the ill-gotten gains.
Gian, who was seated near her son in the dock on Dec 18, was sentenced to two years and six months’ jail for allowing her bank accounts to be used for transactions involving her son’s criminal activities.
The crime involved money that was pilfered from a loan granted to a company called Yip Holdings (YHPL), linked to Ronald Yip.
Yip, who was in his 70s at the time of the offences, was found to have significant deficits in orientation and short-term memory recall.
Both Loy and Yip later became directors and shareholders of YHPL, a company that provided business support services, including the administration of loyalty programmes.
They had met some time in either late 2015 or early 2016, when Yip was then the sole director and shareholder of YHPL.
At the time, Yip owned and lived in a bungalow in Telok Kurau, which had an outstanding mortgage owed to financial services firm Coutts & Co.
Some time in 2016, YHPL entered into a loan arrangement with financing solutions firm ETHOZ, which agreed to grant it a loan of $4 million.
The ETHOZ loan was to be secured through a mortgage on the Telok Kurau property, as well as personal guarantees executed by Loy and Mr Yip, said deputy public prosecutors Eric Hu, Ryan Lim and Xavier Tan.
Of the $4 million, $281,500 was retained by ETHOZ to cover the first repayment instalment and fees, and $2.45 million was applied to discharge the existing Coutts mortgage on the Telok Kurau property.
The remaining amount of over $1.2 million, referred to as the “balance sum” in court documents, was disbursed to YHPL via a cheque dated Nov 10, 2016.
It was deposited into YHPL’s bank account seven days later.
On Nov 18, 2016, Loy transferred the balance sum into a bank account owned by another firm he had set up.
In three transactions, he transferred more than $1.2 million from the firm’s bank account into his personal bank account. He later transferred $850,000 to his mother’s bank accounts, and nearly $114,000 from his bank account to another personal account belonging to him.
At around the same time, Yip was found to have cognitive issues, including significant deficits in orientation and short-term memory recall.
The DPPs said: “(A doctor) opined that he had serious doubts that (Yip) had complete understanding of the ETHOZ loan documents, given that he was computationally challenged and had issues with short-term recall memory.
“There is no evidence that suggests that (Yip) had agreed to Ezekiel using the balance sum as he did – there was no corporate resolution, no agreed investment strategy or targets, and none of the investments were in YHPL’s name.”
The court heard that Loy used $400,000 to satisfy a fixed deposit required for a housing loan to fund the purchase of a Lucky Plaza property worth nearly $1.5 million.
The prosecutors said Loy bought the Lucky Plaza property for his own benefit.
They added that he had also enlisted his mother’s help to buy a Rolex watch for $14,800 using her credit card, and used part of his ill-gotten gains to buy a Mercedes-Benz sports car for his own benefit.
The crime was uncovered only when Yip alerted his daughter and several other people some time in late 2016 and early 2017.
At his trial, Loy told the court that he was an entrepreneur, a “thinker”, and a businessman, not a “fraudster”.
He pulled up his primary school report card and said: “This is my primary school at Anglo Chinese School (Junior)… You look at the remarks, ‘Ezekiel is a fun-loving and enterprising pupil’.”
Lawyers Andre Jumabhoy and Aristotle Eng, who represented both mother and son, said that Loy genuinely believed that he was entitled to carry out the transfer of the balance sum.
They also said that Yip was competent when he entered into the agreement for the Ethoz loan.
The defence said Gian had no reason to believe that Loy was engaged in criminal conduct, adding that she had simply trusted her son.
However, the DPPs described Gian as an “incredible witness”, whose evidence could not be believed.
They also said that she was biased, as she is a mother doing her best to protect her son.
They added that she had said in a statement: “Harming me is fine. As a mother… we will protect our children, even to the extent that we’re being sacrificed.”
Gian still has one pending charge while Loy has multiple pending charges. These will be dealt with at a later date. - The Straits Times/ANN
