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SINGAPORE – A woman tricked the director of online retailer PremiumMall out of nearly $ 220,000 in total after tricking the luxury goods seller into believing that she had paid for some items, although no cash was transferred to the business.
Hetty Rafeta Roselan, 35, was sentenced Friday (October 2) to two years and four months in jail after pleading guilty to a cheating count involving nearly $ 130,000.
During the sentencing, three other similar charges related to the remaining sum were considered.
PremiumMall is an online retailer that sells luxury items, such as bags and shoes, on online channels such as Facebook, Carousell, and Lazada.
Sometime in early 2015, Hetty came across an ad on PremiumMall’s Facebook page and decided to purchase a handbag from the retailer.
The unemployed Singaporean contacted PremiumMall’s director, Ms Lee Bee Yee, 48, via messaging app Telegram to arrange advance payment via bank transfer.
Hetty transferred the payment to the company’s bank account and sent a screenshot of the transaction to Ms. Lee.
After verifying that she had received the money in the bank account, Ms. Lee handed the bag to Hetty. The court documents did not disclose the amount involved in this transaction.
Assistant District Attorney Colin Ng said: “After several successful transactions with the defendant, the victim found the defendant trustworthy.
“She would deliver the items to the defendant upon receiving the screenshots of the payment details, without verifying that the bank transfers were actually successful, that the payments were received into the (company’s) bank account.”
Around July 2015, Hetty ordered a PremiumMall bag even though there were insufficient funds in her bank account.
The DPP added: “Therefore, when entering the payment details to PremiumMall, the defendant deliberately chose to have the bank transfer done the next day.
“The defendant knew that by doing so, she would be able to get a screenshot of the payment details before the money was transferred to the (company’s) bank account.”
Hetty then sent a screenshot of the transaction to Ms Lee, who trusted the offender and handed over the purse without ensuring the money was in the company’s bank account.
Using a similar method, Hetty continued to mislead Ms Lee after this and her crimes finally came to light in 2018 when PremiumMall conducted an internal audit.
Investigations revealed that Hetty had failed to make payments 161 times between July 2015 and March 2018. To date, he has made a partial refund of $ 17,976.
For each count of cheating, she could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
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