Jail for man who took S$950 in ‘bereavement donations’ from 16 victims

SINGAPORE — An unemployed man abused drugs and failed to report for his urine test 68 times over a two-year period, while under compulsory supervision.

Vijayakumar Ramalingam also dressed up as a cleaner and asked strangers for donations. By pretending that a “fellow cleaner” from public waste collector Veolia had died, he swindled each victim to part with sums ranging from S$10 to S$150.

He managed to cheat some of them while a warrant of arrest was active against him, after he failed to attend a court hearing in November last year.

The 55-year-old was sentenced to seven years and four weeks’ jail on Monday (Oct 7), after pleading guilty to nine charges of cheating, drug consumption, possessing a controlled drug and failing to report for a urine test while under a supervision order.

This was not his first conviction — in 2002, he served five years behind bars and was given three strokes of the cane for consuming morphine, a specified drug.

Court documents showed that he began committing fresh offences in March last year.

The court heard that two months later, he went to a couple's home and told them that he was collecting bereavement donations on behalf of a cleaning crew member’s family, saying that the cleaner had died from an accident.

The couple gave him S$80 in cash. The next day, the victim made a police report stating that they had been cheated.

Vijayakumar also cheated an Australian the next month using the same modus operandi. When she told her domestic helper to ask the garbage collectors if they knew about the purported accident, the collectors said that no one had died.

The victim called her bank to cancel the cash cheque of S$100 that she had made out to Vijayakumar, but the bank told her that he had already cashed it.

On Aug 31 last year, a customer service clerk at Veolia filed a police report saying that the company had received an email from another of his victims regarding the collection of unauthorised condolence money.

Vijayakumar had shown this victim his National Registration Identity Card for her to take down his particulars.

In February this year, he told a 55-year-old woman that the cleaner-in-charge of her block of flats had died from a work-related accident. He also asked her not to discard any rubbish from 8am to 12pm the next day as they were conducting a ritual for the purported dead cleaner.

The woman gave him S$50 in cash when he asked for a donation to be sent to the cleaner’s home country along with his body.

In all, Vijayakumar cheated 16 victims out of a total of S$950.

He was finally arrested near Tiong Bahru MRT Station on March 16 this year.

A straw containing 0.38g of heroin was found on him, and he admitted to consuming the drug.