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October 1, 2016

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Prison for tour guide swindler

A CHINESE tour guide who swindled an elderly Singaporean widow out of millions has been jailed for eight years in a case that has fanned anti-immigrant sentiment in Singapore.

Yang Yin, 42, “abused a position of trust,” a court judge said yesterday, after he became close to 89-year-old Chung Khin Chun, a wealthy widow who suffers from dementia, and persuaded her to give him power of attorney over her affairs.

Yang and his family moved into Chung’s luxury bungalow and took control of her S$40 million (US$29.3 million) fortune. Due to a combination of profligate spending and fraud, she was left with just S$10,000 in her bank account by the time she launched legal action against him in 2014.

Yesterday, Yang was jailed for six years for misappropriating S$1.1 million, in addition to an earlier sentence of 26 months for fraud-related offenses.

Chung’s niece, Hedy Mok, said she was disappointed with the sentence — which was half of what state prosecutors had demanded.

“He used my aunt’s money to fight her,” said Mok, who still has a civil suit pending against Yang.

The saga attracted widespread interest in Singapore, where a third of the 5.6 million population are foreigners, with many criticizing the relatively light sentence.




 

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