24 Victims Were Cheated Over $630K By Woman Who Invented Fake Beauty Package

There are many ways to make money.

Some open their own home-based bakery, and eventually, a physical stall.

Others decide to go down the dark route and cheat their way to riches, only to end up regretting their choices.

Unfortunately, the lady we’re going to talk about belongs to the latter group.

24 Victims Were Cheated Over $630K By Woman Who Invented Fake Beauty Package

35-year-old Ong Siok Yong was working for a weight-loss firm when she chanced upon an idea: Inventing a bogus package to cheat customers.

She committed the offences from 2016 to 2019 and wrangled over S$630,000 from 24 victims during this period.

While working for weight-loss firm Bottom Slim in 2016, she came up with the “Model Package”.

In Jan 2017, when she started working for skincare firm Asian Skin Solution, she brought along the fake package and continued selling it to customers.

The Model Package

Here’s how the package works, according to a victim of the scam.

It costs S$24,000 and basically, the customer has to use the company’s treatment services at least twice a month.

Regular photographs would be taken for “progress pictures”, and the client would be paid S$1,116.60 per month for 3 years.

This would come out to S$41,997.60.

Now, if you think about it, that’s a 75% profit over three years.

That’s better than investing in the stock market, no?

No wonder people signed up.

It’s reported that Ong would only recommend this package to customers she’s familiar with, and she’d adjust the price to fit their spending power.

To continue with her scam, Ong would use money cheated from customers to pay the reimbursements.

The M.O.

Ong asked the victim to transfer the money to her personal bank account, claiming that her company doesn’t have one.

The unsuspecting victim transferred more than S$23,000 to the account between 18 Aug and 3 Sep 2018.

However, the victim did not receive the promised reimbursement, and instead, received intermittent payments of up to S$1,000.

In Oct 2018, Ong approached the victim again and asked her to sign up for a second package.

The outstanding amount owed to the victim, she claims, would “go towards” the second package, which will give her “more entitlements and treatments”.

The second time around, the victim transferred more than S$33,000 to Ong’s bank account.

It was heard that this process repeated itself and in total, Ong cheated the victim of more than S$100,000.

In return, the victim only got back about S$33,000.

It was added that Ong cheated her other victims in the same manner.

Of the more than S$630,000 cheated, S$269,992.82 went to Ong while the rest went to the companies.

Caught

In Jun 2019, an employee of Asian Skin Solution lodged a police report accusing Ong of cheating customers.

Ong was taken into remand and pleaded guilty to two cheating charges.

On 17 Mar 2021, she was sentenced to four years in jail.

For each count of cheating, she could’ve been jailed up to ten years and fined.

As for the victims, both companies, Bottom Slim and Asian Skin Solution have taken steps to help the victims.

While they’re not making payments to the victims as per Ong’s promises, they’re preparing to offer the victims the products and treatments to compensate for their “investment”.

They have also reimbursed some customers for transfers made to their companies.

Moral of the story? If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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