Edmund Chen regrets being ‘too friendly’ with a stranger

SINGAPORE — Local actor Edmund Chen was too trusting of a stranger, he said.

“We were too friendly,” he told TODAY, sounding emotional. Chen, 56, was addressing news reports that he had been cheated out of a large sum of money by a woman he and his family had gotten close to last year. He clarified that he did not believe himself to be cheated, but rather that the trust of his family had been abused.

In a Facebook post on Monday (April 10), Chen described how a stranger had approached him on Facebook, asking him to collaborate with her on an art project.

Although the project did not get off the ground, Chen and the woman hit it off, and he was “moved” by the fact that she was a fan of his illustrative works. She was also dating a Mediacorp actor, whom Chen does not know personally.

Chen introduced her to his family over a lunch, where the woman and his daughter, Yi Xin, found that they had similar interests, from “clothing (to) music”. The woman, aged 30, became the unofficial god-daughter of his wife, Xiang Yun.

“She gelled with the family very well, she enjoyed (the same) activities as us,” he said. “So we naturally welcomed her,” he said. Over the course of a few months, a close friendship evolved.

Chen described how the woman would tell him and his family of her sorrows after she allegedly broke up with her actor boyfriend.

“I also knew she had financial difficulties,” said Chen, and felt sorry for her. He added that he wanted to help her “buy time”.

All this led to Chen giving her “hong baos” that totalled around S$11,000. In return, he asked her to help him with the publicity, sales and marketing of the third edition of his illustrated book, Little Red Dot. Although no employment letter was signed, Chen began to allow her to represent him. According to Chen, he also allowed her to manage his social media accounts. 

Chen described how he would bring her with him to events, where she would network and gather the name cards of Chen’s business contacts.

According to Chen, she began contacting people to sign him up for events such as charity projects without consulting him first. He would engage in work he was not necessarily happy to do, he said, because he "had to bite the bullet". He would not say exactly which events these were. He did, however, pay "commission" for her work.

The actor eventually let the woman go in February for not meeting sales targets. She did not react well, he said, and has since still been in touch with his business contacts and friends claiming to still represent him. He also had to turn to Facebook administrators for help in wrestling back control of his account, which he could not access after she had changed his password, according to his Facebook post.

Chen has not asked the woman to return the money he gave her, and admits that he has no concrete evidence of legal wrongdoing. But he felt that he had allowed a stranger to weasel her way into his life.

Describing this as a “crossroads in life” and saying that he is “exhausted”, Chen took to Facebook to tell the story, and to clarify that she no longer represents him or his businesses. He hopes to “move forward” from here, he wrote in his post.