• Pony Poh Yuan Nie was the mastermind of the scheme, said the prosecution
• Her niece Fiona Poh Min and another teacher, Feng Riwen, helped to carry it out
• All three had chosen not to testify in their defence and will return next month to be sentenced

SINGAPORE — After a trial spanning one-and-a-half years, the principal and two teachers of a tuition centre were found guilty on Tuesday (July 7) of a sophisticated scheme to help six students cheat at their O-Level exams in 2016.

Poh Yuan Nie, the principal of Zeus Education Centre, who is better known as Pony Poh, had contested her role in the scheme, which involved students from China.

The 54-year-old was convicted along with her niece, Fiona Poh Min, 33, and Chinese national Feng Riwen, 28.

Each had faced 27 charges of abetment and conspiracy to cheat.

Their plan involved the use of FaceTime’s video-call function, carefully concealed mobile phones and Bluetooth devices.

The students got away with cheating in three papers from Oct 19 to 24, 2016, before an invigilator caught unusual electronic transmission sounds and voices coming from one of them during an English Paper 1 exam.

The trial began in April 2018 and the verdict was previously delayed after Fiona Poh, who showed up with a sore throat and mild cough in April, was turned away due to Covid-19 concerns.

Another tuition teacher and Pony Poh’s ex-girlfriend, Tan Jia Yan, was set to go on trial with them but pleaded guilty on the first day. She was sentenced to three years’ jail in 2018 but will be appealing against her sentence. 

Tan also testified against the trio as a prosecution witness, explaining how the scheme worked.

However, when District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt had called on the trio to testify in their defence, they chose to remain silent. The prosecution argued that an adverse inference should be drawn from this, including the ultimate inference of guilt.

In delivering his verdict, the judge said that the defence had raised several legal arguments but he had rejected them.

As the accused persons did not testify and the defence did not call other witnesses, District Judge Chay found that the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

While Deputy Public Prosecutor Vadivalagan Shanmuga asked for their bail to be increased, the judge found it unnecessary and adjourned sentencing till Aug 21.

They could be jailed up to three years, fined or receive both penalties for each cheating charge.

Pony Poh was represented by lawyer Peter Keith Fernando, while Fiona Poh was defended by Mr Peter Ong and Feng was represented by Mr James Chai.

USED FACETIME TO BROADCAST EXAM PAPERS

During the trial, the prosecution called 21 witnesses — including the six students involved, Tan and invigilators from the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board — and also produced the trio’s own incriminating police statements.

In her statement, Pony Poh, whom prosecutors charged was the mastermind of the scheme, admitted that she had helped students cheat in the O-Level exams.

The students were referred to Zeus by Chinese national Dong Xin, a Singapore permanent resident and director of a company, Nou Cheng Pte Ltd.

The firm had allegedly signed contracts with the tuition centre stating that Pony Poh would receive S$8,000 in deposit and S$1,000 in admission fees for each student referral.

However, the catch was that the monies were “fully refundable” if the students failed to pass their O-Level exams and subsequently failed to get into a polytechnic here.

On the day of the exams, Tan, Fiona Poh and Feng helped the students to attach wearable Bluetooth devices onto their bodies and a skin-coloured in-ear earphone before going into the exam centres.

These devices were linked to mobile phones, which were concealed under the students’ clothing.

Either Tan or Fiona Poh also attended the exams, having registered separately as private candidates, with a hidden iPhone affixed to their chests.

Once the exams began, they used the video-calling app FaceTime to broadcast the exam papers back to their accomplices stationed at the tuition agency.

Once the other accomplices had the answers to the exam questions, they would call the students individually and read out the answers to them.

The students, who received the instructions through their earphones, would then write the answers in their respective exam papers.

The students had also testified that they were told to cough if they could not hear any of the answers clearly, so the answer could be repeated back to them.

Three invigilators who put the scheme to an end testified in court to catching Chinese national Chen Yi, 20, cheating. The speaker in Mr Chen’s earpiece had malfunctioned and began emitting sounds when Feng called him repeatedly.

According to the prosecution, Pony Poh then suggested that Mr Chen return to China. Tan bought him a plane ticket that night and he eventually left the country.

ANOTHER INVESTIGATION PREVIOUSLY DROPPED

In a related case, the owner of Pivot Tuition Centre, Wong Mee Keow, was fined S$2,000 in February 2018 for lying to the police in 2006 to protect Pony Poh. The pair were in a relationship.

In that case, Pony Poh was suspected of helping Chinese nationals gain entry into a secondary school here without sitting for an entrance exam.

However, the investigation against Pony Poh was dropped as Wong lied about not knowing her and the police ran out of leads.

When Pony Poh, Fiona Poh, Tan and Feng were arrested over the current exam cheating scam, Wong again lied about not knowing Pony Poh, deleting photographs of her from her mobile phone to prevent the police from identifying her.