Pretending to be rich, he promised well-paying jobs before cheating them
By Elena Chong & Kimberly Spykerman 11 December 2008
Ms. Wong was surfing an Internet chat line earlier this year when she met a man named Barry, who described himself as the scion of a wealthy Bukit Timah family.
What followed was an unusual proposition: Barry offered the 33-year-old $20,000 a month to be his personal assistant and mistress.
Ms. Wong, whose name has been changed, would have to cover job-related expenses out of pocket. But Barry said she would be reimbursed and his banker would pay her monthly salary.
Ms. Wong took the position and over the course of four days in June, shelled out $20,000 on mobile phones for Barry and designer bags for his girlfriend.
But after handing over the haul she never saw him again.
That was because Barry, it turns out, was really a 28-year-old unemployed man named Tan Sze Leong who lived in a Jurong West HDB flat.
Yesterday, he was sentenced to 27 months in jail for swindling Ms. Wong and three other women between August 2007 and June this year.
Using little else besides screen names like ‘Wealthy Guy’ and the e-mail address Barry_rich@hotmail.com, Tan cheated his victims out of $25,000 worth of cash, Gucci bags and mobile phones, among other things.
In a district court yesterday, a bespectacled Tan stood in the dock, his face largely expressionless as the sentence came down.
Tan had pleaded guilty last Friday to seven cheating charges. Only $4,800 worth of the loot he swindled has been recovered. Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh pressed for a stiff sentence, saying the offences were pre-meditated and that Tan cultivated relationships with his victims online.
Tan’s lawyer Soo Poh Huat said his client, a first-time offender, admitted to the offences at the earliest opportunity, saving the victims embarrassment.
The court heard that he began scamming women early last year.
He befriended his first victim, a 35-year-old-woman, in February last year on an Internet chatline. Several months later, using the names ‘Wealthy Guy’ and ‘Rich Guy’, he offered her $15,000 a month to be his personal assistant. (Though, he pointed, the job did not come with CPF contributions.)
A few days after making the offer, he asked the woman for $5,000, supposedly to entertain a client. She borrowed the money from her sister - and never saw the cash again.
Tan pulled similar scams on another pair of young women this year, borrowing a cellphone and laptop computer, only to disappear.
But his most audacious scam came in June this year after he met Ms. Wong on a website called Singapore 30 Plus.
Calling himself Barry, Tan boasted that he came from a wealthy family, lived in Bukit Timah and had a personal driver.
In an interview with The Straits Times yesterday, Ms. Wong said she met him for the first time in the Jurong Point shopping centre the day after that online chat.
He was dressed in bermudas and a T-shirt. ‘Barry’ was average-looking, she said, but had a silver tongue, claiming his father owned a Singapore semiconductor company.
He offered her the job of personal assistant and a $20,000 salary. She admitted to being shocked by the proposition, but quickly forgot about her fears.
‘I imagined what I could do with that sort of money,’ she recalled yesterday.
According to court documents, Tan said she had to provide him with ‘sexual services’, though the documents did not say whether the pair were intimate. Ms. Wong denied that sex was part of the deal and said she never slept with Tan.
On June 15, Tan took Ms. Wong to Takashimaya Shopping Centre where she bought two Gucci handbags for $2,420. Tan said they were for his girlfriend, according to court papers.
Over the next two days, Ms. Wong bought him a $990 Louis Vuitton bag and almost $16,000 worth of mobile phones.
Then, he disappeared from her life.
‘I am still paying for the mistake,’ said Ms. Wong, who is facing a mountain of credit card debt she estimated at $30,000.
‘It’s gratifying to know that he is being punished. But it’s impossible to measure the trauma.’
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‘Rich Barry’ Conned Women
Pretending to be rich, he promised well-paying jobs before cheating them
By Elena Chong & Kimberly Spykerman
11 December 2008
Ms. Wong was surfing an Internet chat line earlier this year when she met a man named Barry, who described himself as the scion of a wealthy Bukit Timah family.
What followed was an unusual proposition: Barry offered the 33-year-old $20,000 a month to be his personal assistant and mistress.
Ms. Wong, whose name has been changed, would have to cover job-related expenses out of pocket. But Barry said she would be reimbursed and his banker would pay her monthly salary.
Ms. Wong took the position and over the course of four days in June, shelled out $20,000 on mobile phones for Barry and designer bags for his girlfriend.
But after handing over the haul she never saw him again.
That was because Barry, it turns out, was really a 28-year-old unemployed man named Tan Sze Leong who lived in a Jurong West HDB flat.
Yesterday, he was sentenced to 27 months in jail for swindling Ms. Wong and three other women between August 2007 and June this year.
Using little else besides screen names like ‘Wealthy Guy’ and the e-mail address Barry_rich@hotmail.com, Tan cheated his victims out of $25,000 worth of cash, Gucci bags and mobile phones, among other things.
In a district court yesterday, a bespectacled Tan stood in the dock, his face largely expressionless as the sentence came down.
Tan had pleaded guilty last Friday to seven cheating charges. Only $4,800 worth of the loot he swindled has been recovered. Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh pressed for a stiff sentence, saying the offences were pre-meditated and that Tan cultivated relationships with his victims online.
Tan’s lawyer Soo Poh Huat said his client, a first-time offender, admitted to the offences at the earliest opportunity, saving the victims embarrassment.
The court heard that he began scamming women early last year.
He befriended his first victim, a 35-year-old-woman, in February last year on an Internet chatline. Several months later, using the names ‘Wealthy Guy’ and ‘Rich Guy’, he offered her $15,000 a month to be his personal assistant. (Though, he pointed, the job did not come with CPF contributions.)
A few days after making the offer, he asked the woman for $5,000, supposedly to entertain a client. She borrowed the money from her sister - and never saw the cash again.
Tan pulled similar scams on another pair of young women this year, borrowing a cellphone and laptop computer, only to disappear.
But his most audacious scam came in June this year after he met Ms. Wong on a website called Singapore 30 Plus.
Calling himself Barry, Tan boasted that he came from a wealthy family, lived in Bukit Timah and had a personal driver.
In an interview with The Straits Times yesterday, Ms. Wong said she met him for the first time in the Jurong Point shopping centre the day after that online chat.
He was dressed in bermudas and a T-shirt. ‘Barry’ was average-looking, she said, but had a silver tongue, claiming his father owned a Singapore semiconductor company.
He offered her the job of personal assistant and a $20,000 salary. She admitted to being shocked by the proposition, but quickly forgot about her fears.
‘I imagined what I could do with that sort of money,’ she recalled yesterday.
According to court documents, Tan said she had to provide him with ‘sexual services’, though the documents did not say whether the pair were intimate. Ms. Wong denied that sex was part of the deal and said she never slept with Tan.
On June 15, Tan took Ms. Wong to Takashimaya Shopping Centre where she bought two Gucci handbags for $2,420. Tan said they were for his girlfriend, according to court papers.
Over the next two days, Ms. Wong bought him a $990 Louis Vuitton bag and almost $16,000 worth of mobile phones.
Then, he disappeared from her life.
‘I am still paying for the mistake,’ said Ms. Wong, who is facing a mountain of credit card debt she estimated at $30,000.
‘It’s gratifying to know that he is being punished. But it’s impossible to measure the trauma.’
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