On 29 October 2024, 29-year-old Pansuk Siriwipa (“Pansuk”) was sentenced to an imprisonment term of 14 years for the following offences:
- Two counts of carrying on a business for a fraudulent purpose under Section 238(1) of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (“IRDA”) and punishable under Section 238(4) of the same Act;
- Five counts of cheating and thereby dishonestly inducing persons to deliver property under Section 420 of the Penal Code 1871 (“Penal Code”);
- 20 counts of cheating on multiple occasions and thereby dishonestly inducing persons to deliver multiple properties under Section 420 of the Penal Code read with Section 124(8) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 (“CPC”);
- One count of criminal breach of trust under Section 406 of the Penal Code; and
- Two counts of converting or transferring benefits from criminal conduct under Section 54(1)(b) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act 1992 (“CDSA”).
Another 150 offences under the Penal Code, CDSA, Immigration Act 1959 and CPC were also taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing. These included cheating offences, converting benefits from criminal conduct, and leaving Singapore without presenting a passport to an immigration officer, amongst others.
Background
Between May 2022 and August 2022, 187 police reports were filed against Tradenation Pte Ltd (“Tradenation”) and Tradeluxury Pte Ltd (“Tradeluxury”). The complainants alleged that both companies failed to fulfil orders of luxury watches and luxury bags despite full payments being made.
Pansuk was not a registered director of either company but was the main decision-maker for both companies. She was responsible for communicating with customers of both companies, sourcing for suppliers and arranging for the delivery of goods. Her husband, Pi Jiapeng (“Pi”), was the sole director of Tradenation and one of the directors of Tradeluxury.
Both companies operated their businesses primarily as a re-seller of luxury watches and bags on a pre-order basis, offering the goods for sale online. When customers placed orders, they would be required to make full payments in advance, prior to the companies procuring and delivering the goods. This pre-order price was generally fixed at 10 to 20% lower than that of other local resellers.
Investigation Findings
Investigations by the Commercial Affairs Department ("CAD") revealed that by February 2022, both companies were operating at significant losses, as they were sourcing their goods at a higher price.
Charges for Carrying On a Business for a Fraudulent Purpose
Sometime in February 2022, Pansuk was aware that both companies might not be able to fulfil the orders accepted as they did not have sufficient funds to do so. Despite this, Pansuk continued to accept customers’ orders and collect payment for the orders. Pansuk knew that most of these orders would incur losses as she was purchasing the goods from local sellers and selling them to customers at a price lower than the cost price, but continued to do so. Pansuk therefore carried on the business of both companies for a fraudulent purpose, by taking orders for the luxury goods and collecting payments when she knew the companies did not have a reasonable expectation of fulfilling these orders. From March 2022 to June 2022, the total amount of payments collected was $24,782,798 for Tradenation and $946,948 for Tradeluxury, for orders which were eventually unfulfilled.
Charges for Cheating
From April 2022 onwards, given the financial condition of both companies, Pansuk knew that the companies had no capacity to deliver the goods for any further orders. Despite this, she continued to take new orders, as she needed the capital from new pre-orders to purchase goods for the orders that the companies had already taken.
Between April 2022 and June 2022, Pansuk cheated 166 customers of Tradenation by deceiving the customers into believing that the companies would fulfil pre-orders for luxury watches. None of the victims received the goods they had ordered and the total amount cheated was S$12,002,045.
Charge for Criminal Breach of Trust
Investigations also revealed that sometime between April 2022 and May 2022, Pansuk was entrusted with three watches from customers for consignment, and committed criminal breach of trust in respect of the watches, by dishonestly misappropriating the watches by selling them at prices below the agreed-upon price and using the sales proceeds for her own purposes.
Charges for Money Laundering
On 13 April 2022, Pansuk transferred S$176,361.48 from her OCBC account to a car retailer as downpayment for the purchase of a Chevrolet Corvette C8 2Lt registered in Pi’s name. Investigations revealed that part of the S$176,361.48 in Pansuk’s OCBC account were traced to inflows from customers of Tradenation.
In April 2022, Pansuk instructed Pi to sign on 13 cheques from the bank accounts of both companies, amounting to a total of S$1,155,000. The funds from which the cheques were encashed were traceable, in part, to Pansuk’s cheating offences. The cheques were subsequently encashed by a third party and transferred to Bangkok, amongst other things, to fund the purchase of a property in the name of Pansuk’s mother.
Court proceedings against Pi are currently ongoing.
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
29 October 2024 @ 11:55 AM