Jail for serial criminal who bought credit card data, threatened mother and stole S$100,000 from friend’s account

• Lewis Fang Jun Zhe has been in remand since March 2020
• He perpetuated a credit card fraud scheme and stole money from his friend and brother
• He once left threatening voice messages for his mother that targeted his family
• The court heard that he also spent much of his youth breaking the law

SINGAPORE — Within a span of two years, Lewis Fang Jun Zhe committed a string of offences that included drug consumption, sending threatening voice messages to his mother and forging a driver’s licence to rent an Audi.

He also transferred S$100,000 from his friend’s bank account to his own, then illicitly withdrew more than S$10,000 from his younger brother’s account.

Not content with that, he bought nightclub patrons’ credit card details from waiters, used them to top up Ez-link stored value transport cards and transferred the balance in the cards to his bank account.

Fang, now 30, was on Monday (July 12) jailed for five years, four months and one week. He was also fined S$800 and banned from holding all classes of driving licences for two years.

The Singaporean pleaded guilty to 15 criminal charges, with another 37 charges — including exposing an eight-year-old child to drugs — taken into consideration for sentencing.

Fang started his life of crime when he was 12 years old, spending much of his youth in a juvenile home and a reformative training centre and, if not in these facilities, was on probation, the court heard.

He also has prior convictions for drug consumption and traffic-related offences.

The prosecution noted that the efforts to rehabilitate him “clearly had no effect” because his latest charges cover at least six distinct groups of offences. 

WHAT HE DID

Fang began breaking the law again in February 2018, when he was staying at his friend Ho Jun Jia’s home.

While Mr Ho slept, Fang managed to access the friend’s DBS internet banking account and transferred S$100,000 to his own United Overseas Bank account. He then further transferred S$30,000 to his then-wife’s account.

He had not made restitution for the offences. Mr Ho made a police report only in October 2019 but court documents did not state the reason for the delay.

Between October 2018 and March 2019, Fang then paid club waiters S$100 in exchange for one set of credit card details. He managed to secure data for almost 200 credit cards through this.

He used these cards to top up several Ez-link cards with about S$30,000, then refunded the stored value to his bank account or used the Ez-link cards to buy items.

He also tried to top-up the cards with another S$100,000 but these transactions were not approved.

In early March 2019, Fang returned to his family’s residence and stole his younger brother’s passport, among other items.

He used it to cheat OCBC bank’s staff members into issuing him a new bank card, and to change the personal identification number (PIN) of his brother’s bank account.

He then withdrew S$11,080 in cash within a span of three days. He also transferred about S$16,000 from the brother’s account to either his own account or an unidentified recipient.

Then on March 25, 2019, he sent several voice messages in a mix of Hokkien and English to his mother. He threatened to lock their door and burn their house down and that he did not care if “anyone gets burned or chopped”.

Separately, around this time, Fang obtained a forged licence plate at an unidentified store near Kaki Bukit. He had already paid an unknown individual known as “Ah boy” S$500 for a forged driving licence and used it to rent an Audi.

He affixed the fake licence plate to the Audi and drove it in public. He was caught after beating a red light.

He also got his friend to rent a car for him from car-sharing firm Smove because he did not have a licence himself. While in the Jalan Kayu area, a lorry collided into the car’s front bumper but Fang drove off without stopping.

Later in November 2019, Fang moved into his god-sister’s home. 

He soon began to share his supply of methamphetamine with the couple, storing it in an unlocked bottom cupboard drawer where the couple’s eight-year-old child could access.

This continued for about three months before Central Narcotics Bureau officers conducted a spot-check on the unit and arrested Fang in March last year. He has been in remand since then.