Man jailed for four months for submitting falsified payslips to Citibank to get loan
To get a bank loan, Noah Loo Yu Hong handed payslips to a Citibank officer that stated that he worked at a bank and earned $6,350 a month.
But he was unemployed at the time, and because of the forged slips, Citibank was dishonestly induced to give him a $12,920 loan.
Loo, 28, was sentenced to four months' jail on Monday after he pleaded guilty to a cheating charge.
The Citibank officer, Kurumoorthy Chandran, previously reported to be a contract worker at the bank at the time of the offences, was sentenced to a year's jail in July.
According to the prosecution's sentencing submissions for Loo, 14 others have also been sentenced in relation to a larger scheme involving fraudulent Citibank loan applications.
The cases against six others related to the scheme are still pending.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Foong Ke Hui told the court that Loo's friend, Eugene Yap Siang, sent Loo a message on Sept 14, 2018, asking if he or his friends were interested in getting a bank loan.
Earlier that month, Yap's friend Ng Jia Hao told Yap, who needed money, he could help him get a bank loan.
Ng also asked Yap if he had other friends who wanted a loan and offered to pay Yap a commission to find such friends.
Loo was facing financial difficulties when he received the message from Yap and he gave Yap his full name despite knowing that his income level did not qualify him for a loan.
Yap passed the name to Ng, who helped prepare forged payslips in Loo's name.
Yap later collected from Ng two forged payslips dated August and September 2018 stating that Loo worked for HSBC Bank (Singapore) and received a salary of $6,350 and handed them to Loo on or about Sept 26, 2018.
On Yap's instructions, Loo went to Citibank's ION Orchard branch that day and handed the forged payslips to Kurumoorthy for a loan application.
"Citibank was deceived into believing that the forged payslips were genuine and approved the loan to the accused," said DPP Foong.
Loo, who agreed to pass Yap 25 per cent of the loan amount, then withdrew money from Citibank's MacDonald House branch on Sept 27, 2018, and said he handed Ng $2,000. He gave Yap $1,100 some time after.
On Oct 2, 2018, a Citibank representative lodged a police report stating that the bank had received and approved multiple unsecured credit facilities applications based on income documents that were later discovered to have been falsified.
Investigations revealed that between September and October 2018, Citibank received and approved about 20 loan applications for $12,000 to $24,000 each based on forged income documents.
According to DPP Foong, Loo has since made full restitution, paying Citibank $12,920, along with finance charges.
For each count of cheating, Loo could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
Last month, Ng was jailed for nine months and Yap for eight months.
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