Tan never made restitution to the victims, though Great Eastern fully reimbursed them for their losses some time later on Aug 27, 2021. Today, Tan was sentenced to 30 months’ jail, backdated to June 12 last year when he was put in remand
Tan was a financial consultant for Great Eastern when his friend, Mr Cher Chee Wee, introduced his family to Tan. The pair had known each other since secondary school. Mr Cher and his father, mother and sister purchased more than one insurance policy each from Tan. Court documents did not state the ages of Mr Cher and his father.
On Sept 22 in 2017, Tan met Mr Cher’s mother, Liu Swee Khim, now 71, and recommended that she get a Great Eastern insurance policy. Liu trusted Tan since he was her son’s friend, and decided to invest S$100,000 in the policy through Tan. Liu then asked her daughter, Ms Jeslyn Cher, now 38, to give a cheque of S$100,000 to Tan, which she did.
When the cheque bounced, Tan asked Ms Cher to reissue another cheque. This time, he told her to leave the payee name unwritten and he would help her to fill it in. However, instead of addressing the cheque to Great Eastern, Tan wrote the name of a company for which his father is a director. He would then transfer the money in smaller transactions from the company bank account to his own bank account.
On Oct 16 in 2019, Tan called up Liu to sell her another insurance policy — this time, the policy was fictitious. He told her that there was an ongoing promotion for this policy and she decided to invest S$120,000. Liu again asked Ms Cher to issue a cheque with the payee name column left blank, and Tan deposited the cheque into his father’s company bank account.
The next day, Tan called Liu to tell her that he could not meet his sales target for the month. He asked if she could invest an extra S$30,000 into the fake policy and Liu complied. Tan was given a S$30,000 cheque by Ms Cher, which he deposited into his father’s company account on Oct 22, 2019.
Tan repeated the ruse again sometime around March 12 in 2020, where he told Liu that he could not hit his sales target and asked her to buy a S$20,000 policy. She agreed but transferred the money directly to Tan’s personal bank account this time.
In total, Tan received S$309,820 from Liu and Ms Cher. He used the money to feed his gambling addiction and to cover his personal expenses. When the fictitious policy was due to mature on Sept 9 in 2020, Liu called Tan because she had not received any payout or notification from Great Eastern.
To stave off further questions, Tan forged a letter from Great Eastern in October 2020 stating that there “were unintentional errors in the payment process that resulted in a delay in the payment” and sent the letter to her home.
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