43YO Man Jailed 11 Mths for Pawning Fake Rolex Watches; Cheated 2 Pawnshops of S$18,000

When I was younger, a man came up to my dad and me on the street and offered us a Rolex watch.

My father took one look at it and said, “No thanks”.

Of course, buying things from strangers is never a good idea, but given that this stranger was offering a pretty good deal, I was puzzled by my dad’s decision and asked why he refused the offer.

“The watch said Relax,” he said.

Now, while this scammer may have been the laziest con artist in existence, scammers these days are more sophisticated and hard to detect.

Maybe Rolexes are the new in-thing for scammers?

And if they’re successful, you can end up losing tens of thousands of dollars.

43YO Man Cheated 2 Pawnshops of S$18,000

In 2020, 43-year-old Lee Wee Hua was offered a “job opportunity”.

A man known as Ah Guan told Lee that all he had to do was pawn fake goods that belonged to another unknown person and he would earn 20% of the earnings as commission.

Seduced by the promise of fast and easy cash, Lee accepted the man’s offer.

Big mistake. 

In July last year, Lee visited Fook Soon Pawnshop in Ang Mo Kio hoping to pawn his first fake Rolex watch.

He was unsuccessful, however, as the valuer refused to accept the watch, saying Rolex did not have such a model.

In response, Lee lied that he had bought the watch from overseas and left the shop in a hurry.

His second attempt went a little better.

On 30 July 2020, Lee met Ah Guan at Whampoa Market to pick up a fake Rolex. He then went to Fund Express Pawnshop in Balestier to try and pawn the watch.

The valuer at the pawnshop, Mr Chan Kam Wan, incorrectly assessed it to be a genuine watch and offered S$10,000 for it, which Lee accepted.

Lee then handed the cash to Ah Guan, who passed him S$2,000 as commission.

A couple of days later, Ah Guan handed Lee another fake Rolex watch, which he would try to pawn in Heng Heng Pawnshop in Hougang.

A manager working at the pawnshop, Mr Lam Kee Loi, offered Lee S$8,000 for the watch and Lee agreed.

Instead of handing over the money to Ah Guan, Lee lied and said the valuer assessed the watch to be fake, and that he left the watch in the store.  So, he ended up keeping the S$8,000 for himself.

Dang, so he even scammed the scammer!

A Warning From a Friend

Lee might have gotten away with his offences were it not for a warning from Mr Lam’s friend.

The friend, who also worked in the pawnshop industry, told Mr Lam that people were going around pawning fake Rolex watches.

Concerned, Mr Lam decided to verify the authenticity of the watch he had gotten from Lee by taking it to a watch specialist.

The watch specialist confirmed the watch to be a fake, and Mr Lam lodged a police report on 7 August last year.

Mr Chan also filed a police report after another branch warned him about Lee and he discovered the Rolex he bought was fake.

Jailed For 11 Months

Yesterday (17 May), the 43-year-old Singaporean was sentenced to 11 months in jail after pleading guilty to two cheating charges.

While his lawyer conceded that his actions were premeditated, she noted that he had handed over his identification card for registration purposes in the pawnshops.

This, she said, showed that he “felt trapped and had no other choice but to resort to this to pay off debtors.”

For each count of cheating, Lee could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

The moral of the story? Money never comes easy.

To know more about scams in Singapore, watch these videos we’ve done in collaboration with the Singapore Police Force:

Feature Image: Jitjaroen Channarong / Shutterstock.com