Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Cheating - as defined in Penal Code of Singapore

Cheating – Whoever, by deceiving any person, fraudulently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to consent that any person shall retain any property, or intentionally induces the person so deceived to do or omit to do anything which he or she would not do or omit if he or she were not so deceived, and which act or omission causes or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation or property, is said to "cheat". For example, A cheats if he intentionally deceives Z into a belief that A means to repay any money that Z may lend to him when A does not intend to repay it, and thereby dishonestly induces Z to lend him money. Cheating is punished with imprisonment of up to one year, or a fine, or both.

Read my article about cheating in The Online Citizen:
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/12/stop-cheating/#comment-39083
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr Tan,

You are a bit idealistic in your definition. Get real. In the real world, laws are made by people, court judgements are made by people. Who are these people? These people are those in authority and can maintain and enforce their authority. Those outside the authority are just a voice in the wilderness. You should have realised this by now. If you want to make a difference, be the authority, not outside it.

December 10, 2008 9:31 PM
Unknown said...

If someone has to resort to assuming 'legal justice' as a feasible and actually adequate precautionary against Cheating


it always means Damage is already DONE, whether they know it or not.


If that is not Naive, i wonder what is.

December 10, 2008 10:19 PM
Anonymous said...

Insurance agents and the RMs commit all of them. You just have to observe and listen to their sales presentation. One objective is to make the listener do what they him or her to do. That is the focus. And they muster all the tricks just to do that. Their pitch borders n cheating.

December 11, 2008 12:13 AM
Anonymous said...

can you present a tape recording>?

Do you have a witness? said your wife by your side when the cheat was conducted?

Else, please make a Police report first. Once you dare to make such report meaning, only you and the cheat(er) .....

December 11, 2008 4:21 AM
Anonymous said...

I wonder how time share and land banking companies are able to continue to operate in singapore ?

December 11, 2008 5:04 AM
Anonymous said...

to nail an insurance agent for cheating you can use the fact finding form, the product sold to you and of course the tape recorded
presentation...
Fact finding form reveals the incompetence and the agent's attempt to mislead and misrepresent.
The product can show a mismatch to your circumstances and needs and evidence of cheating.
The taped conversation ratifies the above two.

December 11, 2008 9:25 AM
Concerned said...

In future if any Relationship Manager or Insurance Agent want to sell you any product, bring a tape recorder along before you let them have the sales pitch. You have the right to do so provided you informed them openly that you are tape-recording the conversation. In this way, RMs and insurance agents will think twice before they say thing that may be construed as mis-selling or ommiting any material information that are detrimental to the buyer. If there is no tape recording of conversation, then don't buy. Just quote the Minibond, DBS High Notes, Pinnacles Notes, Jubilee Notes, etc debacle as the reason why you need to tape record the conversation.

December 11, 2008 11:13 AM
Anonymous said...

The problem is you don't walk in to buy but you are pulled in, dragged, seduced in, lured in, conned into, or prospected and unprepared for the unexpected.
They are smart to target their victims.They choose their victims.The victims may not know how to operate the tape recorder in their hand phone.

December 11, 2008 12:39 PM
Anonymous said...

I could not understand obviously fraudulent timeshare and land banking companies operating in Singapore. But I finally had it explained to me.

If one person cheats another things are very easy. The victim is innocent and the cheater is guilty. Everyone hates to see a cheat benefit.
So a scoundrel selling a wealth giving stone for a $1,000 to a sweet uneducated old lady in the street will rightly have his reputation destroyed and even his freedoms removed.

But what if the cheater offers $15,000 useless land banking plots to that same sweet old uneducated lady in a shopping centre. ?
What if the cheat partially or wholly funds lawyers, accountants, bankers, newspaper advertising, magazine articles, printers, office space, tv programs and advertising, secretaries, administrators, salespeople, finance departements, advertising departments, marketing departments, regulators, business lunches, hotel rooms, property conferences, property shows, rental space in shopping centres, investment advisors, consultants, phones, credit card bills , mortgages, car loans, big screen TV's, charitable programs.
What if the people who indirectly benefit dont check or care if they are involved in a scam.
What if the cheater says if you regulate me, investigate me or make it hard for me to sell my products I will take my highly profitable cheating business, jobs and money to another country that welcomes me.?
What if exposing the scam will embarass people, businesses and authorities who supported it and made money from it ?

Then everyone including the authorities wants the victim to shut up and carry on being cheated. The cheats lawyers will sue into bankruptcy anyone who is righteous enough to ask why the king is so obviously naked.
And the people will patronisingly say caveat emptor to the victim.
When the cheat finally runs away with all the money all will despairingly say "why didnt the government do something about that ?"

The bigger the scam, the more people benefit from it, the harder it is to expose. But you can only bring down cheats by exposing them. So if not you then who ?

Keep up the good work Mr. Tan

December 11, 2008 5:16 PM
zhummmeng said...

cheating has been going since life insurance was sold by salesmen. It was bad but now it is even worse.It used to be the drop outs who went into insurance selling then people with only 3, 4 O levels and now graduates are in the business. This trade was shunned by the educated but not now. Why? Easy money is the reason. What do you need to earn easy money? Nothing except for some tikam tikam exams to pass and you will be licensed to 'kill' to rob , to cheat.Similarly in the banks many young graduates are attracted to the trade and given dubious titles like private banker, personal banker, RMs and so forth .Which position in the bank can let them earn 10 of thousands a months, driving car and having condo. What do they do to earn so much? Add value to their customers? make their clients richer? No, like the insurance agents, they have the same license, they sell, push, cheat ,bullshit until the cleints are sold. What did they learn from the exam mill college? to bullshit.
What do they learn from in house training? How to bullshit, lie and cheat the old ladies , uncle and old Ah sSohs.
The only goal of the insurance agents, RMs , personal bankers financial consultants, is to make a sale at all cost. The insurance company or the bank is NOT interested how they made the sale. They DON"T want to know so long no one complains.
What about the regulator, MAS?
Same, so long no one complains, it means caveat emptor is working .No need to regulate. Self regulation is working. The insurance companies are disciplined, the banks are disciplined enough. You see, self regulation is good. Sale is going up every year; API growth is exponential; single premium is a bit sluggish because of CPF $60K curb otherwise it will be better.You see , so good. We don't want over regulation. It might stifle the growth. The insurance companies know best. the banks know best.
Of course the insurance agents and the RMs had a field day. They can cook up any sales pitch so long they sell.
The number of poor souls and victims has also gone in tandem with insurance growth.
Unless MAS is truthful and sincere about making changes to the industry and enforce the laws I don't see cheating disappear in the near future.

December 11, 2008 6:56 PM
Anonymous said...

if not for the CPF SMRT $60K prohibition I think 90% of members' balance would have gone up in smoke, previously was 83% loss between 2000-2007.
Thanks to the foresight of CPF otherwise many would have lost 70% of the value in this financial meltdown and no need to retire.
These cheats ought to be banned.

December 11, 2008 10:53 PM
Anonymous said...

If an insurance agent doesn't tell you how much commission he or she earns from the product if you ask. That is concealment of fact too because the commission you pay can tell you how much the return of of the product is affected.
If the insurance agent is unable to tell you the return of a product he or she is willfully concealing the fact.Example : i asked an agent from ntuc about the return of the cashbacks over 15 years, revosave she was unable to tell or didn't want to tell. This is suppression of truth with intention to cover up .
Is concealment cheating ?

December 12, 2008 6:54 PM
Anonymous said...

Insurance Insider Info: Breaking news.

If you want to catch cheats just go for the insurance agents who qualify for MDRT, TOT AND COT. They definitely committed mis-selling and misrepresentation to earn the commission to qualify for these titles. Not only that they might have committed even ruthless and shameful acts.It is a well known fact in the industry. Ask any 'old bird' in the trade they can share with you. So don't think they are the cream of the crop.They are the top who creamed off a lot of people to bring shame to the industry. Check their documents and there lie the proof.
How did they get past their supervisors? Their supervisors are accessories and comrades in arms after the fact and pimped their earnings.

December 12, 2008 8:04 PM
Anonymous said...

There are a number of reputable FA firms who distance themselves from the mdrt ,cot and tot benchmarks. To them these marks are salesmanship marks at the best and con marks at the worse. FAs are not sales companies but advisory companies to help people meet their financial needs.It makes sense to set themselves apart from the insurance companies because insurers are sales oreinted companies which pursue sales of products and adopt these marks for their salespeople as measure of success.
Lately selling or product pushing has come under a very negative spotlight.Selling has been associated with cheating, lying and miss-selling and mdrt, cot or tot marks are sales and commission driven and these marks are therefore questionable. These marks promote and encourage unethical practices and condone malpractices because they don't take into consideration the quality of the business and value add to the clients' financial life. As these marks are commission based the FA firms don't want to be perceived as promoting unethical practices in the pursuit of commission at the expense of the consumers.
In todays' report in the ST, a fee based FA, ipac, conducted a survey and their findings among other things, show that consumers prefer trusted advisers to be qualified , honest and competent and their advisers to be also Certified Financial Planners.This finding could be the defining moment for the industry as consumers are beginning to know thier rights to responsible advice by qualified people and no more run of the mill insurance agents who sell and push products. The minibond debacle has convinced the need for honest and competent advisers and definitely not product pushers.
If this is what the consumers now prefer it augurs well for the industry. It will be an industry of professional practitioners like other professions and not some get rich quick business that attracts salesmen or women con artistes like the online chat conman who cheated a few women using his silver glib tongue.The insurance agents are no different from this man. Wagging their glib tongue is the way to sell and push unwanted products to consumers and make a killing.

December 12, 2008 11:59 PM
Anonymous said...

In the banks they call the salesmen and women consultants, RMs, personal bankers, private bankers.
In the insurance they call the salesmen and women consultants , planners, wealth manager senior financial consultants and executive financial consultants.
The question is are they really what the titles suggest? Are they they performing as the titles suggest?
Are they qualified to use those titles?
If they are not they are misrepresenting themselves to the public. The public may think they are qualified when actually they are salesmen and women in disguise.
Is this cheating?

December 14, 2008 10:13 AM
Anonymous said...

MAS must regulate the titles. It is really getting out of hand. NTUC agents are calling themselves senior and executive financial consultants.They are misrepresenting themselves.They hardly look like one and have the knowledge and skills to be called one.They can't perform financial calculation and have any inkling of some financial terms. I was surprised when I engaged them at a roadshow.
They are just salesmen and sellers of any products. They cannot use such titles to hoodwink the public. MAS must stop them. Imagine having plumbers calling themselves engineers or nurses calling themselves doctors etc or toilet cleaners as toilet engineers.

December 14, 2008 12:22 PM

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