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| Mon, May 19 2025, 7:24:34 | [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [10] ] |
| Subject: One more scam besides the usual timeshare scams | |
Author: ccn666 | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: Wed, Jul 07 2004, 12:51:04 Dear all, True story, true victim. Well, if you think that this kind of scam can only happen in some poor, corrupted, lawless third world country, then THINK AGAIN! OK, at least this one had a happy ending. The culprit was actually caught and jailed. But those bastards who are still running crimeshare outfits like LGM, ERI, IRN etc in Singapore will NEVER go to jail because they will NEVER get caught, despite more than a decade of intensive scamming (thanks to our world class weakest consumer protection laws). Please forward this to everyone that you know ... car owner or not, it doesn't really matter because the level of awareness of all kinds of scams in Singapore needs to be raised drastically. Thanks for reading. -------------------------------------------------------- The Straits Times Interactive JULY 6, 2004 TUE Singapore Paying for a car they don't have By Christopher Tan http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,260012,00.html? YOU could say 33-year-old Eric Pang is a typical yuppie. He has a promising job, a young family, as well as a house he and his wife bought recently. And like most Singaporeans in his position, he is servicing a car loan. Except Mr Pang does not have the car. Because of a fraudulent transfer of ownership four years ago, his year-old Honda Civic, worth about $88,000 then, simply vanished one day. 'It was early one morning Chinese New Year 2001,' recalled his wife, Serene (right), whose husband is overseas. 'I went to get the car and it just wasn't there. We thought we'd parked it elsewhere and looked around. We eventually gave up and made a police report.' They learnt that the car had been repossessed by HSBC. That was a surprise, as Mr Pang had not taken a car loan from the bank. As it turned out, the dealer who processed the car's sale when Mr Pang bought the vehicle had transferred the ownership of the Civic to his own name shortly afterwards and taken out a loan for it from HSBC; a loan which he had no intention of honouring. The culprit, Ng Khiang Heng of used car trader Motor Exchange, was caught, convicted and sentenced to a year's jail. He had forged Mr Pang's signature to transfer the car to himself, and also forged a vehicle log card. HSBC did not return Mr Pang's Civic. Instead, it sold the car - as it would many repossessed vehicles - to recoup its loan. Mr Pang said in an e-mail: 'I'm still paying for the car, which I drove for only a year. The loan I took for it from my company has another four years to go.' Though he does not have the car, he is still required to pay for it, as unlike a case of theft, he cannot recover the money from an insurance company. He is trying to recover the proceeds from the Civic sale from HSBC through a civil suit. His lawyer, Mr Khor Wee Siong of Khor Thiam Beng & Partners, said it could be a long haul getting the money back. The incident could have been prevented if there had been 'more thorough identity checks', he added. 'In Singapore, many cars cost more than houses. If I borrow $150,000 from a bank to buy a house, the mortgage is signed before a lawyer. It is the lawyer's duty to ensure the mortgagor understands what he is signing. It is also the lawyer's duty to verify the signatory's identity. If the lawyer makes a mistake, he can be sued. 'Why don't we introduce mandatory identity checks and independent legal advice for vehicle transactions?' A Land Transport Authority director said the authority is working on a multi-million-dollar secured online system that, when up in 2006, will plug loopholes that now facilitate documentational scams. But she added that 'there is no such thing as a completely foolproof system'. HSBC, meanwhile, was unreachable for comment. Mr Pang subsequently bought another car - an old Mitsubishi Lancer - to replace the Civic; and his wife drove an Opel Astra. They have since scrapped the two cars and bought a Camry. 'So we have one car, but two car loans,' sighed Mrs Pang. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |