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Felicia Tay Bee Ling (left) and Eric Ong Chee Wei (right) spun a tale of discounted property deals to dupe Mr David Tan.PHOTOS: SHIN MIN DAILY NEWS
SINGAPORE – A married couple cheated the wife’s “friend” of $220,000 by luring him into a fake property investment scheme – without the husband knowing that she was having an affair with the victim.
Felicia Tay Bee Ling and Eric Ong Chee Wei worked together to spin a tale of discounted property deals to dupe Mr David Tan, who had never met Ong but knew that he was Tay’s husband at the time.
On June 24, Tay, 49, and Ong, 50, pleaded guilty to a cheating charge each. Ong has since made restitution of $10,000 to Mr Tan, 48.
Court documents did not disclose if Tay and Ong are still married to each other.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Kiera Yu told the court that Tay was a housewife, while Ong worked as a property agent from 1999 to 2006 before turning to odd jobs.
Tay met Mr Tan in 2010, and they had an affair from 2014 to 2017.
Around September 2015, Ong conspired with Tay to deceive Mr Tan.
They agreed that Tay would tell him that there were opportunities for him to invest in condominium units, which he could sell later for significant profits.
Their intention was to dupe Mr Tan into paying supposed “security deposits” for the units, said the prosecutor.
In reality, the two offenders knew that there were no such units for sale.
Acting on Ong’s instructions, Tay told Mr Tan that she had “investment opportunities” involving the purchase of condominium units at Residences @ Emerald Hill.
Tay claimed that due to the “poor property market”, developers were willing to offload unsold properties at discounted rates to agents.
She also claimed that Ong was one such agent as he used to work in the property industry.
Tay told Mr Tan that she could help him purchase seven units directly from the developer of the condominium at a discounted rate.
She also claimed that the units could be resold at higher prices and promised Mr Tan that each investment would purportedly yield high returns within three months.
In reality, six of the units that he was supposedly buying did not exist at all.
DPP Yu said that for the remaining unit, Ong and Tay knew that they had no basis to offer it as an “investment” to Mr Tan as it was not available for sale.
She added: “Felicia also told David not to tell any ‘outsiders’ about these investment opportunities, as they were ‘exclusive offers’.”
Tay also sent handwritten records of the “investments” to him, said the prosecutor. “However, no official documents on the sale and purchase of the units were ever provided.”
Ong gave Tay hard copies of option-to-purchase (OTP) forms purportedly issued through a salesperson under real estate company OrangeTee.
Ong got to know the salesperson when he was still working as a property agent.
Court documents stated that the salesperson was unaware that Ong had used these OTP forms issued in the salesperson’s name to commit cheating.
Tay filled in an OTP form for each of the seven units and sent screenshots of the fake documents to Mr Tan over WhatsApp.
He then handed to Tay $220,000 in total as “security deposits” over seven occasions from September to November 2015.
Tay promised Mr Tan that he would purportedly receive profits of more than $1.7 million when the units were sold.
DPP Yu said: “He had immense trust in Felicia because they were in a relationship, and he was under the impression that (Ong) worked in the property industry.”
But around January 2016, Mr Tan sensed that something was amiss when he received no investment returns.
He confronted Tay about the matter, but she did not give him any concrete answers.
To appease him, she prepared an “IOU document” with information from Ong, who also signed it.
This document dated Jan 8, 2016, was created to convince Mr Tan that Ong would supposedly pay the money owed to him, providing the victim with a false sense of security.
In March 2017, Mr Tan and Tay broke up.
The victim finally reached out to OrangeTee on Dec 11, 2019, and the company told him that none of the transactions listed on the OTP forms was legitimate.
Mr Tan made a police report the next day and officers arrested the two offenders in June 2022.
Ong and Tay will be sentenced in July.
Shaffiq Alkhatib is The Straits Times’ court correspondent, covering mainly criminal cases heard at the State Courts.
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