Duo who scammed 4 shops with fake watches jailed 14 months each

SINGAPORE — Passing off their counterfeit watches as genuine luxury timepieces, two men from Hong Kong cheated four shops here of nearly S$19,000 over two days.

On Wednesday (June 21), Cheung Siu Wa, 50, and his godson Chow Chun Tung, 33, were each sentenced to 14 months’ jail for abetting one another to cheat.

The duo came to Singapore on a social visit pass on Feb 15. It was their first time here, and they took high-grade replicas of Chopard and Cartier watches — bought in Japan and Hong Kong — into the country, intending to pass them off as genuine goods at watch shops.

In Singapore, they searched for various watch shops to peddle their counterfeit goods. They even created a Whatsapp chat group with an unknown person to coordinate their plan, and shared information on the watch shops to target, and the types of timepieces they would accept.

On Feb 16, Chow went to Brightime By Championtime watch shop at The Bencoolen at around 1pm.

He told the owner that he had gambled all his money away, and wanted to sell his watches — a Chopard Imperiale and a Cartier Ballon Bleu with an accompanying warranty booklet — to continue gambling. Neither Chow nor Cheung had visited any casinos in Singapore at that point in time.

The owner accepted the watches and paid Chow S$5,400 in cash.

The same day, Cheung went to Horological Restoration Centre at Lucky Plaza at around 3pm, and offered to sell a Cartier Santos watch to the owner. He also produced a certificate for the watch upon the owner’s request, and received S$4,100 for the sale.

Both shop owners lodged a police report after realising that they had been scammed, and Cheung and Chow were arrested on the same day.

No restitution has been made thus far.

The duo faced four charges in total, of which two were proceeded with. The remaining two, taken into consideration during sentencing, involved shops in People’s Park Complex and The Bencoolen. Between Feb 15 and 16, Cheung and Chow sold three watches to these shops for S$9,400.

In his sentencing remarks, District Judge Mathew Joseph rapped the duo for carrying out the premeditated offences in a short span of time, and noted that they had cheated the shop owners of a significant sum of money.

For cheating, the two men could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.