By Shaffiq Alkhatib | Posted: 14 March 2011 1542 hrs
SINGAPORE: A Filipino service engineer was sentenced
on Monday to 18 months jail for being part of a conspiracy,
cheating Standard Chartered Bank of S$317,100.
Mark Robert Fajilan Landicho had worked with a syndicate that
illegally helped foreigners obtain unsecured credit facilities from
the bank even though they were not eligible.
The group did so by forging its clients' pay slips, inflating the
salaries so that their annual pay would appear to meet the bank's
minimum income requirement.
According to court documents, Landicho had worked with two former
employees from telemarketing company, Touch & Tech, to cheat
the bank between July and October 2009.
One of them is, 26-year-old Charon Legaspi Dimpas, a fellow
Filipino.
Dimpas, who used to be one of the firm's direct sales agents, was
sentenced to 45 months behind bars after admitting last November
that she was part of the scam.
Her then-boss, 60-year-old Singaporean Abdul Karim Baba, has not
been dealt with in court.
Touch & Tech was engaged by Standard Chartered to market the
unsecured credit facilities the bank offered to prospective
clients.
Landicho's colleagues first referred him to Dimpas in June 2009 as
he wanted to apply for such services even though his salary did not
meet the minimum requirement.
His application was approved after she doctored his pay
slips.
Soon after this, 28-year-old Landicho started to help the syndicate
solicit for customers by advertising its illicit services on
pinoysg.com, a Singapore-based Filipino portal.
Interested parties would forward him their genuine payslips via
email.
He would send them over to his accomplices, earning S$75 for each
successful application.
Defence Counsel Manoj Nandwani told the court that Landicho did not
falsify the documents which led to the deception.
Mr Nandwani stressed that his client's role in the whole affair was
"to forward information to the perpetrators" without taking part in
the falsification itself.
In response to these, Deputy Public Prosecutor, Magdalene Huang
told District Judge Jill Tan than the acts of forgery would not
have taken place without Landicho's soliciting.
-CNA/ac