SINGAPORE: After being told by a woman in Singapore that he would receive a discount on each case of Pokemon cards from his bulk purchase on Carousell, one buyer paid her close to S$80,000 (US$60,000) in deposits.
Another buyer consolidated orders from members of the Pokemon TCG Facebook group and paid a deposit sum of S$20,840 (US$15,550).
Both buyers did not get any cards in the end.
The woman, Koh Jia Wen, 26, was sentenced to 31 months' jail after pleading guilty on Thursday to four counts of cheating.
She also plotted to get new iPhone sets from Singtel by getting someone to sign subscription contracts and did not pay the bills.
Thirteen other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Sometime between 2021 and 2022, Koh used her account for e-marketplace Carousell to promote the sale of Pokemon cards, which were typically sold in cases, where each case would hold six boxes that contained 36 packs of cards each.
When interested buyers contacted her, she would tell them that the cards had to be pre-ordered and asked them to pay a 50% deposit.
Koh would direct them to deposit the money into various bank accounts, none of which belonged to her because she had been blacklisted from opening new bank accounts.
Investigations revealed that Koh was not allowed to open any new bank accounts with United Overseas Bank (UOB), OCBC and DBS without further clearance, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Sean Teh said.
There were no further details on why this was so.
A Pokemon card collection. (Photo: Bloomberg)
The bank accounts Koh used for the buyers belonged to friends and acquaintances who would withdraw the transferred money after the transactions and hand it to her.
For one buyer, for instance, he pre-ordered 74 cases from Koh in 2021 and transferred S$83,300 (US$62,100) to her designated bank accounts.
Koh only delivered 10 of the 74 cases and gave a variety of excuses as to why the rest could not be delivered.
In the months until her arrest on July 7 last year, Koh went on to receive more deposits for the fake bulk pre-order of Pokemon cards from two interested buyers Tan Wei Chuan and Ray Chua.
Tan paid her S$79,675 from February to May last year.
One of the bank accounts used for the transaction allegedly belonged to an acquaintance named Patrick Lin Hongjin whom Koh had permitted to keep some of the money that Tan transferred.
Court documents did not state if this acquaintance would be facing charges for his role in the scheme.
Chua, who was initially only interested in buying one or two cases for himself, ended up taking orders from members of the Pokemon TCG Facebook group, and made a total transfer of S$20,840 to the accounts provided by Koh.
He later filed a police report when the Pokemon cards were not delivered.
As for the iPhones, the court heard that sometime in 2017, Koh got acquainted with Tor Xue Mei through an online streaming platform called Bigo before meeting in person.
Before October 21 in 2020, Koh asked Tor to sign up for mobile services for her claiming that she needed them for work, and she would pay for the monthly bills.
Tor agreed and signed two 24-month contracts with Singtel for mobile phone lines.
Koh then chose an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max 512GB valued at S$2,349 (US$1,750) and an Apple iPhone 11 Pro 256GB valued at S$1,889 for each contract and paid the balance for the mobile phones.
Court documents did not state how much this balance was for the phones.
Later, Tor started receiving bills from Singtel and incurred about S$2,800 (US$2,070) for both contracts that were left unpaid.
No other information was given as to how long the bills had been left unpaid.
DPP Teh said that in doing this, Koh had instigated Tor to deceive Singtel by dishonestly subscribing to its mobile service and inducing the delivery of the Apple iPhones as part of the contract.
He told the court that Tor is likely to face charges after the conclusion of Koh's case.
In April last year, Koh made restitution of S$6,399 (US$4,800) for the Singtel bills she owed.
Seeking 26 to 29 months' jail for Koh, defence lawyer Azri Imran Tan urged the court to consider the lighter sentence, saying that Koh was still a relatively young adult whose husband just had a major surgery, and they have an infant daughter.
In delivering her sentence, District Judge Janet Ang said that the harm from Koh's criminal conduct was significant, and she had not only orchestrated the scam but also recruited others in some of these offences.
The scale of offending was also expansive, and it was particularly troubling that she had escalated her criminal conduct since the time of her previous probation for theft and cheating.
For cheating, Koh could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.