Woman gets probation for cheating 34 of $18,000

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http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Crime/Story/A1Story20120803-363207.html

MONEY AT ALL COST

A 22-year-old woman has been given probation for cheating 34 victims of nearly $18,000.

Tricia Tan Si Ying, unemployed, admitted to 17 charges of cheating and one of giving false information to the police.

According to The Straits Times, she cheated her friends and her mother over a four-month period from last December.

In November last year, she obtained the particulars of the victims' cousin or friend via Facebook and impersonated them to ask for loans.

She would send text messages to the victims and deceive them into believing that their friends or cousins were in urgent need of cash, inducing them to transfer money into her bank account.

The victims only realised that they had been cheated after checking with their real cousins or friends.

Tan continued cheating even while she was on court bail after being arrested.

She used the same way to cheat her victims, except that she told them to transfer money into another person's bank account.

Tan cheated her mother by telling her that she was making restitutions to the victims of the first set of cheating offenses.

Her mother transferred money to various bank accounts, from which she later retrieved the money.

The English daily said the court took into account 33 other counts of cheating and attempted cheating during her sentencing.

The prosecution had objected to the probation and asked for a jail term instead.

However, the judge placed her on 18 months' probation and bonded her parents for $2,000 to ensure good behavior.

Tan, who was found to have low intelligence, said she would look for a job to pay her victims back. Her parents have made partial restitution of $3,150 to some of the victims.