A seasoned con man named Peter Aw Boo Cheong, who cheated six women out of $437,000, had been sent to jail for five years after his sentencing in 2019. But with a new case, he plead guilty to the district court on August 24 that he had duped another woman out of $320,000. They added another year to his sentence, which he will serve when he’s done with his current time.
But Peter Aw Boo Cheong has been doing this since 2010!
Who is Peter Aw Boo Cheong?
According to a report by The Straits Times, 49-year-old Cheong was a serial con man who was sentenced to five years in jail for a series of cons involving women he would meet on dating sites.
While it is unclear what the true number of women he cheated was, evidence against him showed that he was able to get $437,000 out of six women from 2015 to 2017, and now a new case had convicted him of swindling another $320,000 out of a seventh woman over three separate counts of cheating.
But was Ashry Owyong Min worse than this guy?
How did Peter Aw Boo Cheong cheat women?
The Straits Times reported that Aw would claim he was an experienced foreign exchange trader to women he would meet on various dating sites. He would then ask for money to invest for them, or leverage their online relationship to ask for funds to cover various “expenses” or “losses” which were not real.
Aw, who is Malaysian but is a Singapore permanent resident, told the judge in his August 24 hearing that he was an experienced forex trader, but the prosecution belied this, saying that he was not an actual trader.
The man used platforms Match.com and Tinder to meet women, befriend them, then ask for specific amounts of money. He presented himself as a forex trader who was good at investing.
He introduced himself as “Daniel” to the seventh woman in 2015, on the website singaporelovelinks.com. His latest victim was a 42-year-old Singaporean women. When the friendship and feelings were more intense, he then asked her for money on several instances for “making payment for his clients’ accounts” or opening a bookie account to recover “investment losses”.
The woman had to take out loans to be able to give him what he wanted, believing that they were at the very least friends, or sometimes lovers.
The woman initially handed him $20,300 for an investment, which she transferred to the account belonging to the mother of Aw’s third child. Then later, he asked for another $27,000. The woman had to take out an insurance payout then hand him her savigs of $1000 to cover the amount.
The next month he asked the same woman to give him $73,000. This time, the woman took out a bank loan to be able to give him that much.
According to the report, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Hsiao Tien said, “In the accused’s dealings with the victim, he led her to believe that he was a credible and trustworthy person who had valuable information about investment, and would help her to invest monies for her best interests.”
When Aw had become uncontactable in 2019 due to being in prison, she lodged a police report.
What did he do with the money?
The same report mentioned that he used most of the funds to gamble with in Marina Bay Sands Casino and for his personal expenses.
All in all, he cheated seven women out of almost $800,000.
