http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?col=insightdownsouth&file=/2009/9/12/columnists/insightdownsouth/4691214&sec=Insight%20Down%20South
The Star Online, 12 Sep 2009, Seah Chiang
Nee
Need to wise up quickly to the ways of
the world
“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.
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