Former DBS loan officer among 3 charged with defrauding banks

SINGAPORE — A former loan officer at DBS Bank who conned his victims into applying for loans and then having those loans transferred to his own bank account was among three finance professionals charged on Wednesday (Oct 23) for a variety of crimes.

The three accused caused their victims to lose more than S$3.6 million between 2009 and 2018, the police said in a news release. They were charged with cheating, criminal breach of trust and money laundering offences.

According to court documents and the police release, former DBS loan officer Ng Eu Hou, 27, is said to have deceived two victims he had met while attending to their banking-related enquiries in May last year.

Ng had conned them into keying in their ATM pin numbers to apply for loans amounting to S$4,000 in their names, without their consent or knowledge, the documents said.

“When the victims discovered that they had received the loans, (Ng) told them it was an error and (the victims) were advised to return the amounts to the bank,” the release said.

“He then provided his personal bank account details, where his victims transferred the loans to,” it said.

The other two accused are Shen Tus-kuang and Tan Chen Yen.

Shen is a former director of Linden Asset Management (Belize).

During his time at Linden, he was also a proxy for a BNP Paribas customer who had engaged the asset management firm to handle her account with the bank, and would relay instructions to BNP Paribas on her behalf.

The 51-year-old is said to have submitted fax instructions purportedly signed by the customer to transfer more than S$2.4 million from her account into Linden’s bank account. These transfers were not authorised by the customer.

He faces 37 charges, and his bail is set at S$450,000.

Meanwhile, Tan, a former banking operations specialist at Bank Pictet and Cie (Asia), is said to have misappropriated about S$1.2 million in cash from the bank’s safe between late 2016 and August last year.

To avoid detection, Tan — who was in charge of handling the cash — replaced the misappropriated cash with counterfeit and blank notes, and manipulated the bank's accounts, the police said.

Court documents said that Tan, 36, falsified records in a banking software system to state that S$100,000 in cash had been withdrawn from the safe, and made false entries relating to cash balances. He reportedly also misappropriated a Citibank cheque.

Tan faces 20 charges, and his bail is set at S$150,000.                 

Ng is set to appear again in court on Nov 11, while Shen and Tan are both due back on Nov 13. CNA  

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