SINGAPORE: A man was sentenced to 7½ years’ jail on Wednesday (Sept 30) after he cheated 21 victims, including his own father and friends, of more than S$3.8 million in total.
Sebastian Lim Qian Ji, 33, committed the offences in order to help a friend who was facing financial problems with a frozen food business.
He had earlier pleaded guilty in August to eight counts of cheating and an unrelated traffic offence.
Twenty-six other charges were considered during his sentencing.
The court heard in August that Lim had returned around $860,000 to some of his victims, bringing the total loss to about $2.9 million.
In earlier proceedings, deputy public prosecutors Jordy Kay and Chan Wayde told the court that Gerald Lee Hai Rui, 32, sought Lim’s help to obtain loans from Lim’s friends.
Lee was the sole director of a company called Geroy, which was facing financial woes in early 2021.
After agreeing to help Lee, Lim began cheating multiple victims between February 2021 and September 2022.
In early 2022, Lim lied to his 59-year-old father, claiming that he was involved in some “projects” that needed funding.
He claimed that the older man would receive “attractive rates of return” if the latter loaned money to Geroy, said the DPPs.
Unaware that the claim was false, Lim’s father told three of his friends of the “opportunity”.
“All three of his friends believed the false representations and gave the accused’s father a total of $430,000 on multiple occasions,” the DPPs said.
The father then handed the money to Lim.
Lim also cheated multiple other victims.
To avoid detection, he told the victims to either hand over cash or make bank transfers to various intermediaries, including his mother and his then girlfriend, who would then deliver the money to him.
Without disclosing details, the DPPs said that in an unrelated case, Lim was earlier convicted of drink driving and disqualified from holding or obtaining all classes of driving licences for two years from Dec 22, 2022, to Dec 21, 2024.
Despite this, he drove a car and got into an accident on Nov 17, 2024.
He was arrested 11 days later.
On Sept 30, Lim was also disqualified from holding or obtaining all classes of driving licences for a period of four years from his release date. - The Straits Times/ANN
