“WE SAT through a talk yesterday on land investment in
Birmingham and was shocked when my friend immediately ploughed in
S$25,000 (RM60,000) to buy a 1,076 sq ft parcel,” an Internet
surfer recently wrote.
“It had no planning permit and might take seven years to get
one,” he added.
Yet she took the plunge. Why?
“She was enticed by the
gifts – a S$600 (RM1,440) camera, S$100 (RM240) in shopping and
S$50 (RM120) in dining vouchers and two bottles of
wine,” the writer explained.
He was commenting on the government’s search for people with
special qualities for posting in China.
“They’ll be hard to find since 90% of Singaporeans – and 100% of civil
servants – don’t have them; they are very naive, easy to be eaten
alive unknowingly,” he concluded.
I had long wondered before this case what ingredients were
needed to pull off a successful scam.
When I was a news editor in Hong Kong, I put this question to a
retired head of a cheating syndicate called Tin Sin Kuk, which had
existed among the Chinese for ages.
The ring consisted of five or six men and women, who would
select a victim – always a rich person – to take part in
“swindling” another person, who was actually a gang member.
Needless to say, the rich person himself was the target.
Sitting in my Causeway Bay flat, the old man said: “For the cheating to succeed, the victim
must have greed in his heart, the greater the
better,” he said. “If he’s honest and not greedy, we cannot
swindle him.”
A little naivete helps, of course. High education is no
safeguard, he added.
Are Singaporeans too simple-minded
– or greedy – to be able to survive unscathed in this era of
sophisticated scams and financial sharks?
Protected by a system of
laws and a stable environment, they become
vulnerable when exposed to
sophisticated swindlers and Madoff-type con
men.
The old magic stone tricks have made way for modern online
frauds, credit card cheats and money schemes in which black and
white are not always distinguishable.
“The average Singaporean
is honest and law-abiding, and tends to think the world spins like
that,” said a retired manager. “If a well-dressed Westerner spins an
investment plan, he’ll likely lap it up.”
As children, Singaporeans are over-protected by parents; and as
adults, by strict laws.
“I know of 12-year-old students who are not allowed to take a
bus by themselves.”
When he was commenting on reports of Singaporean businessmen
being cheated in China at the time of its opening up, university
researcher Wang Shouqing had said: “The Singapore company is good in a very
mature environment, but not good in emerging
markets.”
His implication was that
Singaporeans were too sheltered to be able to deal with the less
scrupulous world outside. Many tend to take people’s words too much
at face value.
Erik Wang, Singapore’s Consul-General in Shanghai, was quoted as
saying that there was a simple lesson for Singaporeans investing in
China: “Know
how to cheat others more than they cheat you.”
Sharing the sentiments was controversial Taiwanese legislator Li
Ao, who commented on TV several years ago that Singaporeans were
stupid because they came from “poor genes”.
He ranked them lower in natural intelligence (despite their high
education) than the people of Taiwan and Hong Kong.
“Taiwanese are scoundrels, but lovable, Hong Kong people are
craftier, (Chinese mainlanders are unfathomable) and Singaporeans are
stupider,” he said, adding that it was partially
due to genetics.
One Singaporean reacted: “Some Singa-poreans can be very
simplistic, because we have grown up in an engineered
environment."
“The average Singaporean
is good at academic studies and works hard, but falls short on
individual initiative and street-wise qualities, relying too much
on the government for help.”
As affluent Singapore
opens its doors wider to foreigners, it will likely attract the
wrong type of people to come and work their schemes
here.
In recent years, cheating has been on the rise. Many originate
from half a world away – through the Internet.
This column has also reported on numerous cases of retirees
being cheated of their savings by pretty, sweet-talking Chinese
women.
A recent headline said that on average at least one Singaporean falls
prey to lottery scam fraudsters every day, and this remains a
concern to the police.
Con men sell dreams and fakes ranging from college degrees to
job contracts. They organise online “auctions” and make off with
people’s money.
The most prevalent are lottery scams, which is a worldwide
scourge. In a seven-month period there were 210 Singapore victims,
cheated of S$2mil (RM4.8mil).
The amount is, of course, a far cry from the US$50bil (RM175bil)
that Bernard Madoff cheated Americans of, including some of the
most savvy investors. Such is the sophistication of this criminal
art.
Singapore has its own investment scandal, albeit on a much
smaller scale as a whiplash of America’s financial crisis.
An activist for clean governance Tan Kin Lian explained on his
blog that it began in 2006 when US investment banks
were saddled with mortgages and corporate debts that were turning
bad.
“They had to get rid of these assets.”
They looked for countries
with weak protection of consumers which were convinced about the merits of using
“the light touch” to regulate the financial sector and encourage
financial innovation.
“They found Hong Kong,
Singapore and Taiwan,” said Tan.
As a result, some 10,000 Singaporeans, many of them retirees,
lost S$500mil (RM1.2bil) of their savings to what they were led to
believe was a “safe investment”.
So far, only a fraction of the money has been recovered.
Insight Down South by SEAH CHIANG NEE
Singaporeans are not stupid. We are all just decent people, and
would rather think well of others than to think ill of anyone. We
are cultivated people, at least the majority of us, after years of
peace and prosperity amidst a turbulent world compared to
others.
Even our worst con men cannot be compared to the class of
Taiwanese scoundrels and crafty Hongkies.
Because of our upbringing since young. We all swore and pledge
allegience daily to our society - made of your family,
relativies and friends and mine. It rubs in and is ingrain in us,
to treat our fellow citizens better, unlike the riff-raff dregs of
humanity from other foriegn lands.
But globalizing had made us all reach out to the world, and
carrying such honour bonds to treat non Singaporeans is a disaster
to ourselves, thus the many cases of being cheated.
I too, had been cheated before in foreign investments. I blame
no one but myself, for being too trusting. But I realize what was
lost was only money, not my honour and oath I had pledge, not only
to my society, but to uphold it in my dealings with others of my
race - human, for our pledge is an idealism beyond
nationalities.
Money, afterall, can always be made back over time. But
reputations, once ruined, very seldom are given reprieves. There is
always divine retributions anyway.
So really, there is no need to change ourselves, for to change,
would be to lower ourselves to the level of scoundrels and crafty
knaves the Taiwanese and Hongkies truly are.
We Singaporeans have a vision and a goal in mind ingrained
deeply within us, and that is to build a better society than the
one before. Hong Kong and Taiwan are not our model of an
ideal society. No country is, I believe, for we are still evolving,
as a nation, and if peace and prosperity is still within our grasp,
it may be a nation that continues to be beyond the expectations of
many, just as we are held in awe by other nations today.
Such visions will be a reality, but only if our young are fully
nurtured, and some of them will willingly step forward
selflessly, to serve our society, to take us all to the
next level, by building upon existing foundations within a peaceful
and rational environment, than in an acrimonious
dead-locked one.
