Five men, Sufandi Bin Ahmad (“Sufandi”), Bijabahadur Rai s/o Shree Kantrai (“Bijabahadur”), Kok Chiew Leong (“Nicholas”), Juma’at Bin Johari (“Juma’at”), and Mohamed Haron Bin Hassan (“Haron”) were sentenced to imprisonment terms ranging from 10 weeks to 7.5 years for their involvement in mortgage loan frauds.
Background
Between 2014 and 2015, Bijabahadur devised a scheme to perpetrate mortgage loan frauds involving two properties. Bijabahadur and Sufandi were involved in a conspiracy to cheat a bank concerning the two properties, while Nicholas was part of their conspiracy for one of the properties. Their mortgage loan frauds involved them first arranging with the sellers and the sellers’ property agents to sell the property at a price lower than what was stated on the conveyancing documents, i.e., the price on the conveyancing documents were inflated.
Juma’at and Haron, the agents for one of the sellers of the properties,[1] reached an agreement with the sellers to hand over monies, equivalent to the difference between the agreed price and the actual stated price, received upon completion of the sale of the property, to the accused persons. The same agreement was reached with the seller of the other property by Nicholas. The accused persons then split the monies received from the properties amongst themselves.
As part of their conspiracy, Sufandi also recruited individuals who were the purported buyers of these properties. Forged income documents in the names of these buyers were submitted to the bank in support of these mortgage loan applications. The bank was deceived, on account of the forged income documents, into disbursing loans amounting to $5,160,000 for two mortgage applications for the two properties. The bank incurred a loss of over $1,790,000 on the two properties. The frauds were eventually uncovered when the nominee buyers defaulted on the loans.[2]
The five men were sentenced as follows:
Under Section 420 of the Penal Code, whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Under Section 471 of the Penal Code, whoever dishonestly uses as genuine any document which he knows to be a forged document, shall be punished in the same manner as if he had forged such document, which is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 4 years, or with fine, or with both.
Under Section 423 of the Penal Code, whoever fraudulently executes any deed which purports to transfer, and which contains any false statement relating to the consideration for such transfer, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3 years, or with fine, or with both.
The cheating of a financial institution, including through the submission of forged documents or by the provision of false information, in order to obtain a mortgage loan is a serious offence. The Police take a serious view of such offences and perpetrators will be dealt with in accordance with the law.
[1] The seller, Mohamad Hamzi Bin Rabu, of the property whom they represented was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for his involvement after he pleaded guilty to a charge under s 423 of the Penal Code.
[2] One of the nominee buyers, Iswandi Bin Yahya, was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment for his involvement after he pleaded guilty to a charge under s 420 of the Penal Code. The other nominee buyer has been dealt with.
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
20 August 2024 @ 4:30 PM