SINGAPORE – A man who managed unlicensed moneylending “stalls” for a transnational crime syndicate admitted again to his offences on April 2, after his earlier guilty plea was retracted on March 30.
This took place after Deputy Public Prosecutor Kamen Chiang edited certain dates in court documents, telling the court that they were clerical amendments.
On April 2, Tan Keng Wee, 49, was sentenced to four years and two months’ jail and a fine of $1 million.
He pleaded guilty to five counts of being involved in unlawful moneylending activities and one count of dealing with the benefits of his criminal conduct.
If he fails to pay the fine, the Singaporean will have to spend an additional 50 weeks behind bars.
This was the same sentence that he received on March 30.
The stalls earned between $3 million and $5.2 million in profits from August 2005 to June 2019, court documents stated.
On his own, Tan earned more than $1 million between 2004 and 2019.
The court heard that he was in Singapore when he started working as a runner for the syndicate in November 2003, earning $1,000 a month.
A man known only as “Ah Ren” was the syndicate’s financier and “tua towkay”, which means “big boss” in Hokkien, said DPP Chiang.
He added that the big boss was responsible for managing the operations of various “ah longs”, or unlicensed moneylenders, within his group.
The unlicensed moneylenders employed runners who helped disburse loans to debtors and verify their identities.
In March 2004, Tan was promoted to “assistant ah long”. Six months later, Ah Ren relocated the syndicate from Singapore to Malaysia due to increased enforcement action here.
Tan was later promoted to “ah long” and managed a stall that had between 80 and 100 debtors.
Ah Ren relocated his operation to Shenzhen, China, in September 2005, and Tan followed him.
In 2009, Ah Ren increased Tan’s salary to $2,000 a month and gave him a 30 per cent profit share linked to the stall to motivate him to bring in more business.
Tan was promoted to a towkay position soon after and started a new stall with capital from Ah Ren.
By 2019, Tan was managing eight unlicensed moneylending stalls.
Generally, loan interests were charged at 15 per cent to 20 per cent and were repayable within four to eight weeks.
If a debtor needed a longer repayment period, the interest rate could be increased to as much as 40 per cent to 50 per cent of the outstanding amount.
Between 2006 and 2019, 1,529 police reports were made against Tan’s eight stalls.
In 2014, he bought an executive condominium in Singapore that cost over $1 million, using more than $180,000 of his ill-gotten gains to pay his mortgage. He also used a portion of his criminal proceeds to buy properties in China.
In April 2019, the Chinese authorities arrested Ah Ren, who was sent back to Singapore. Tan stopped his unlicensed moneylending activities by June that year.
Realising that he was a wanted man, Tan remained in China, but later decided to return to Singapore to surrender in 2025.
He arrived here in March that year and was arrested soon after.