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SINGAPORE – An illegal lender made a total of $ 8,400 in loans to at least 19 Filipino domestic workers and charged an interest rate of 20 percent per month, five times the maximum legal rate.
Assistant District Attorney Pavithra Ramkumar said the interest rate was exorbitant, with the maximum rate prescribed in the 2009 Lenders Rules of just 4 percent.
Tan Boon Teck, who was making up to $ 1,500 a month from his loan business, committed the crimes even though he knew that making money loans without a license is illegal in Singapore.
He also reprimanded and vulgarized debtors who were unable to pay their loans.
The 61-year-old Singaporean was sentenced on Wednesday (November 25) to two years and six weeks in jail and a $ 240,000 fine after pleading guilty to eight counts of illegally operating a $ 3,900 loan business.
He will spend 16 more weeks behind bars if he cannot pay the fine.
During the sentencing, another ten charges related to the remaining amount were considered. He committed his crimes between 2017 and last year.
Tan had attacked his Filipino girlfriend, domestic worker Shirley Cansino Eustaquio, for helping him pass loans on to debtors and collect repayments.
For her role in the crimes, she was previously sentenced to eight weeks in jail and fined $ 60,000. Since then she has been repatriated to her home country.
DPP Pavithra said that Tan would generally stay in nearby Takashimaya, Ion Orchard or Lucky Plaza Shopping Center on Sundays to make new loans to new borrowers and collect loan repayments from existing borrowers.
He added that Tan was known to his debtors by various names, including “uncle” or “Kuya,” which means “older brother” in Tagalog.
In June 2017, a Filipino maid met Tan and Eustaquio near Ngee Ann City because she wanted to borrow $ 500 for her grandson’s medical expenses.
The maid, who was earning $ 700 a month, later received $ 400 in cash from Tan and was told that $ 100 had been deducted from the loan amount as “interest.”
Tan also told him that he had to repay the loan in monthly installments of $ 100, otherwise he would be charged a late fee of $ 50.
“Whenever (she) was late to make payments, the defendant would call her and yell at her on the phone, which scared her,” the DPP said.
The maid stopped making payments in December 2018. By then, she had paid Tan a total of $ 1,500.
From then until last year, Tan targeted other servants and also gave them loans with high interest rates.
In an earlier statement, police said they received information about Tan in November 2018. He was arrested on May 12 of last year.
On Wednesday, District Judge Marvin Bay said: “The court needs to control illegal loans, which is an undoubtedly lucrative activity in which criminals expect to make huge profits with relatively modest cash outlays.
“I observe that the loans were disbursed to foreign domestic workers who would be a vulnerable class of people with limited means of obtaining credit and who would be vulnerable to exploitation if they turned to illegal lenders to meet financial demands due to family crises such as medical expenses of relatives in their country of origin “.
First-time offenders convicted of conducting an unlicensed money lending business can be jailed for up to four years and fined between $ 30,000 and $ 300,000.
They can also receive up to six reed strokes. Tan cannot be whipped because he is over 50 years old.
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