Woman Cheated Of $1 Million By Church Friend In ‘Fake’ Investments & She’s Not The Only One

2019-01-31 , 4:53 pm

The Chinese have a saying: 讲钱伤感情 (Talking money hurts relationship).

And it’s true.

When you lend money to a friend, you can consider it as a gift and continue on with the friendship, or lose that friend forever.

This article is going to talk about something similar.

Except, instead of a loan, the friend cheated her of her entire savings instead.

Investing in Fake Projects

Ms Alice Chua is a 71-year-old retiree who worked for over 50 years to save up nearly $1 million.

Now, you’d be thinking, she’s going to lead a golden life now.

Except, her church “friend”, Ng Kwee Huay, got to her money first.

She convinced her to invest in projects in Thailand, Myanmar and Australia. Opportunities which she claimed came from contacts she’d gathered in her previous job.

Sounds pretty legit, except these supposed projects doesn’t actually exist.

And She’s Smart About It

Ms Chua had told Ng that she wanted to earn enough profit to buy a house in three years’ time.

And Ng told her that if she invests in the projects, she’ll be able to buy her house in two years or less.

When faced with such an enticing opportunity, who wouldn’t invest? Especially in a “friend”.

So she went along and invested her money.

From 2013 to 2015, she had passed money to Ng a total of 107 times. During that period, Ng had also returned her $119,527.50, saying that these were her returns on the investment made.

But Then, The Ghosting Starts

In 2016, Ms Chua decided to withdraw some of her principal sums to pay for a car.

And that was when her troubles start.

She’s out of the country. There are some problems with withdrawing money from foreign investment schemes.

She’s not in the country at the moment.

Finally unable to take it, Ms Chua lodged a police report against Ng on 7 Oct 2016.

Only To Find A Horrifying Revelation

There weren’t any investments, actually. And of the nearly $1 million that she had invested, she only got back about $120,000.

Ng is actually an undischarged bankrupt since 2002 and knew Ms Chua around 2008 or 2009 when she worked in the church as a warden at St Joseph’s church.

She had swindled six other individuals, one of which is her ‘goddaughter’.

They were cheated between $1,800 to about $58,000 each.

Ng pleaded guilty to 23 counts of cheating and was sentenced to six years and two months’ jail.

Moral of the Story:

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

So if you’re someone who always invests in things that are recommended by friends, you might want to stop doing that.

Because even if their investments are legit, you’re going to be unhappy with them if the investments they recommend goes bad.