A LAWYER who was part of a group which conceived a scam in 2003 to swindle banks and the Central Provident Fund Board by falsely declaring the purchase prices of properties was sentenced to five years' jail on Thursday.

David Tan Hock Boon, 40, was the fourth person to be convicted in connection with the plot, which also involved property agent Goh Chong Liang and fugitive lawyer David Rasif.

Rasif went missing in June 2006 with about $12 million of his clients' money and remains on the run.

Pleading for leniency, Tan's lawyer Mr Sanjiv Rajan said that his client was 'not your ordinary conniving criminal.'

He put up a tough stance comparing the roles of Goh and Tan in the scam, referring to the former as the 'prime mover.'

Goh was sentenced to five years and five months' jail on Aug 2 last year.

He said: 'Mr Tan very foolishly followed Mr Rasif's instruction and engaged in the conspiracy.'

Before the sentence was meted, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ms Ong Luan Tze urged the judge to take into consideration that Tan committed the offences while he was a practising lawyer.

Tan, a father of two young children, stopped practising law in April 2006 after leaving Rasif's law firm and became a freelance business development manager.

He was arrested in August 2006 and has been remanded since Aug 14 this year after he failed to raise the $120,000 bail offered.

According to court documents, Goh's role was to convince sellers and buyers of properties, mainly HDB flats, to declare inflated purchase prices.

They secured mortgages well above the value of the houses with phony documents such as CPF and employment records.

They pocketted nearly $700,000 in just over a year .

Court documents did not say how the men planned to get away without repaying the loans although Mr Rajan added that Tan never received any money from the transactions made.

When the Commercial Affairs Department got wind of something suspicious in 2005, Goh asked to have signatures removed from documents connected to the sale.

Tan handed over the documents to Goh, who erased his own signatures and replaced them with those of another man, Zurkifli Alang Noordin, in return for money.

Zurkifli was jailed for a year in April.

Another man involved in the scam, Abu Samah Yacob, was jailed for 17 months in June.

When the hearing was over, Tan was a picture of a broken man - dazed and lost in thought - when friends patted his back before he was led away.