22YO Woman Faked Burglary With Boyfriend & His Brother to Steal S$57,000 in Cash, Items From Family

As a rule of thumb, burglars don’t usually steal from their own homes, right?

Wrong.

The only thing more terrifying than a burglary is discovering that the burglar is part of your family, lying hidden in plain sight in your midst. 

Time to put those Among Us skills to good use to find the true Impostor. Here’s what went down. 

22YO Woman Faked Burglary With Boyfriend & His Brother to Steal S$57,000 in Cash, Items From Family

On Tuesday (13 Apr), Tiffany Tan Hwee Shuan, 22, along with her boyfriend, Oh Jia Kai, 25, and his twin brother, Oh Jia Cheng, pleaded guilty to one count of theft with common intention. 

The plan involved breaking a safe and procuring a place of storage for the stolen items. 

At first, Tan intended to steal a safe from her brother, Theron Tan. The safe contained a S$11,500 Rolex watch, two gold rings, and cash, along with other items. 

Later, she concocted a devious, detailed plan to make it look like a burglary. 

She also found out that her father’s bag contained S$34,000 in cash. 

She rented two cars a day before the theft: a BMW for her personal transport, and a Suzuki Swift to store the stolen goods. 

On the actual day, she instructed the twin brothers on what to do, telling her boyfriend to distract her mother so that the house would be empty that night, while his twin would carry the stolen items to the car. 

On 11 July, Tan’s brother and father were out. Tan and Oh Jia Kai left the house with Tan’s mother for supper. 

When they got into the car, Tan lied that she left her phone at home and went back to the house. 

She went into her brother’s room and retrieved the safe, before unlocking the master bedroom with a key obtained from a cabinet in the hall. She went in, took the S$34,000 from her father’s bag, and took all of the piggy banks in the house as well. She also stole a Louis Vuitton pouch and a box with money.

Tan covered the items in the bag with white cloths, hauled the goods to the lift lobby and called out for Oh Jia Cheng, who was on standby on the floor above to take over the items. 

Tan went back to join her boyfriend and mother for supper. 

Tan’s brother realised that his valuables were gone that same night and he called the police. Tan’s father also found that his cash was missing.

To make herself seem like a victim of burglary, Tan told her brother and the police that around S$3,000 belonging to her had disappeared from her bag as well. 

Vincent Koo Bing Jie, 25, a friend of Oh Jia Cheng, was called on to break open the safe. 

They brought the safe to a car workshop to break it open. The stolen items were then packed into a luggage and kept in a self-storage facility. 

Oh Jia Kai gave the S$34,000 stolen from Tan’s father to his friend Wong Kin Pong and said that the money was won by Tan’s brother through illegal betting, hence it was not safe for him to keep the money at home as the police were already investigating other matters within the family. 

Wong kept the money. Oh Jia Kai returned to him a few days later and took S$14,000 from him to spend on Tan’s birthday on 23 July. 

Oh Jia Kai gave Tan S$950 for her birthday, paid S$2,800 for her birthday party in a bar on 22 July, and spent S$3,150 on a Louis Vuitton bag. He had placed a bundle of cash totalling S$7,100 in the bag. 

They tried to cover up the incident as a break-in but they were exposed by police camera footage which revealed Oh Jia Cheng exiting the lift of a HDB block with two bulky bags of items on 11 July 2020, the day of the supposed break-in. 

The police tracked down passenger information provided by Grab before arresting Oh Jia Cheng on 21 July 2020. 

He deleted his Grab records, as well as messages exchanged with his twin brother and Tan. He attempted to deny that he was involved in the incident by saying that he was not close to them.

However, he eventually admitted to the theft, along with his brother and Tan who were arrested later. 

The police conducted a raid on the storage facility on 22 July and seized S$20,000 from Mr Wong’s house on Tan’s birthday. They also took the Louis Vuitton bag containing the stack of cash.  

The three of them will be sentenced on 19 May 2021. 

Feature Image: Alexander Kirch / Shutterstock.com