Jail, S$270,000 fine for woman who charged domestic workers 15% interest for illegal loans

SINGAPORE — A Filipina working as an info-technology programmer and analyst here issued illegal loans to 18 of her fellow countrywomen and got away with it for almost three years until a borrower reported her to the authorities.

David Cyrine Mercado made almost S$73,000 in profits from the operation, using most of it as capital for new loans. Another woman in cahoots with her, domestic worker Valino Marianne Pasco, earned about half that sum.

They had charged their borrowers — who were all foreign domestic workers here — a monthly interest rate of 15 per cent.

On Thursday (Jan 30), Mercado was sentenced in a district court to two-and-a-half years’ jail and a fine of S$270,000. She has to spend another nine months behind bars if she cannot pay the fine.

The 30-year-old, who worked in software company Solderfield and had contracted work with Maybank, pleaded guilty to nine counts of issuing illegal loans under the Moneylenders’ Act, with another 19 such charges taken into consideration for sentencing. 

For each charge, she could have been jailed up to four years and fined up to S$300,000.

Asking for a sentence of two-and-a-half years and a fine S$360,000, Deputy Public Prosecutor Kang Jia Hui described the 15 per cent monthly interest rate as exorbitant, arguing that they had exploited their borrowers who were “vulnerable with little recourse to legal avenues”.

Pasco, 42, was earlier sentenced to two years and three months’ jail and fined S$270,000 for her role in the unlicensed moneylending operation.

KEPT LARGER PORTION OF INTEREST EARNED

The court heard that in late 2016, Pasco’s friends asked her if she knew anyone willing to lend them money.

Pasco then told Mercado that her friends were willing to pay 20 to 25 per cent interest on the loans, claiming that it was the market rate. 

Mercado agreed to give them loans with a monthly interest rate of 15 per cent.

She provided the capital sum and kept records of the borrowers and the sums lent, while Pasco liaised with them.

For her work, Mercado kept two-thirds of the interest earned while Pasco kept the rest.

They also agreed that interest for the first month would be charged at the time the loan was disbursed.

Mercado created two databases on a Microsoft Excel sheet to manage the business — one to track loans that had not been fully repaid, and one to record all past loans.

Court documents showed that the domestic workers who borrowed money from them earned a monthly salary of about S$600 to S$700.

The borrower who reported Mercado to the police said that she had to pay various sums that were “too much”. Her Filipino friends had also complained that Mercado was asking them to pay “a lot of money” for the loans.

When the pair was arrested on Sept 17 last year, the borrowers still owed them S$88,607 worth of loans with a projected interest of almost S$40,000.

Of the $72,910 that Mercado earned, she kept S$3,682. The authorities recovered S$2,500 of what she kept from the bedroom that they shared in the flat of Pasco’s employer.