SINGAPORE – Former lawyer Jeffrey Ong Su Aun was jailed for 19 years on Monday after he misappropriated nearly $76 million of his clients’ money.

The case involved the largest amount of money misappropriated by a lawyer in Singapore.

Ong’s sentence is the heaviest meted out to a former member of the Bar for such offences.

The prosecution said that Ong, the former managing partner of JLC Advisors, had treated cash from the firm’s clients as his own, adding: “The accused freely disbursed these monies as he deemed fit to benefit himself, his friends and his business associates.”

Ong, 45, pleaded guilty to 10 charges including criminal breach of trust.

Sixty-six other charges, including those involving the remaining amount, were considered during sentencing.

Ong had enjoyed a personal benefit of more than $7.2 million from his offences and had made no restitution.

He was struck off the rolls in 2022.

Ong left Singapore for Malaysia in a private-hire car on May 13, 2019, when his offences could no longer be concealed, the prosecution said.

He moved into a hotel in Kuala Lumpur and became uncontactable three days later.

On May 29, 2019, the Royal Malaysia Police arrested Ong, who had in his possession a stolen Malaysian passport issued to a 43-year-old man.

The next day, he was brought back to Singapore and has been in remand since June that year.

Even though Ong misappropriated nearly $76 million, his offences caused a total loss of over $64 million to his victims.

This is because he had committed round-tripping in which more than $11 million was reused in his offences.

Allied Technologies (ATL) entered into an escrow agreement with JLC on Oct 23, 2017. Escrow is an essential service in capital markets that supports transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

Around March 2019, ATL made several requests to JLC to transfer more than $33 million to it from the escrow account. JLC then handed it a cheque for the amount.

But bank staff later said the cheque could not be cleared as it appeared to have been altered and had smudges.

ATL did not cash in the cheque and asked JLC to issue a cashier’s order for the funds.

The prosecution stated in court documents JLC never did so as there was no money left in the ATL escrow account for the order to be carried out.

It emerged Ong had withdrawn all the funds by Aug 21, 2018. He had also forged the cheque.

The prosecution said that, among other things, he had used more than $6.3 million of the misappropriated amount to make a partial repayment for a friend’s US$13 million loan.

It added that Ong also used $8 million that he had taken from ATL’s escrow account to provide a loan to another friend, Mr William Wong Koon Lup, who was then the chief executive of CW Group (CWG).

On Monday, Ong pleaded guilty to criminal breach of trust charges linked to ATL involving over $28 million.

In a statement, the police said Ong committed criminal breach of trust linked to more than $14 million involving CWG, which had also entered into an escrow agreement with JLC.

Separately, in October 2017, Ong asked one of his firm’s employees to transfer an amount of more than US$4.85 million (S$6.4 million) from the escrow account linked to two other firms, Airtrust (Singapore) and Wrangwell, to one held by JLC.

The police said in its statement that no instruction or consent was provided by Airtrust or Wrangwell for the transfer.

The monies were subsequently disbursed on Ong’s instructions as loans to other parties without Airtrust or Wrangwell’s knowledge or consent.

Other Singapore cases of unlawfully obtained monies

1. Chia Teck Leng

Chia Teck Leng used to be a financial manager at Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) and was involved in Singapore’s biggest case of commercial fraud at the time.

Chia had been a compulsive gambler since at least 1994 and was deep in debt by the time he joined APB in 1999.

To feed and fund his gambling addiction, he swindled four foreign banks out of $117 million from 1999 to 2003.

By submitting forged documents, he opened accounts in APB’s name, with himself as the sole signatory. APB was unaware of his illegal activities.

The banks were so eager to do business with APB that they willingly gave out loans without doing due diligence to verify if Chia was indeed authorised to act for the company.

In 2004, the then 44-year-old man was sentenced to 42 years in jail – then the longest jail term for a commercial fraud case. 

2. Teo Cheng Kiat

From Feb 9, 1987, to Jan 18, 2000, Teo Cheng Kiat misappropriated nearly $35 million from Singapore Airlines (SIA).

Teo joined SIA as a clerk in 1975 and was promoted to become a supervisor of the cabin crew division in 1988.

He then used the names of crew members who did not fly on various flights to make false claims and channelled the payments to his own bank accounts.

On June 30, 2000, he was convicted on 10 counts of criminal breach of trust in the High Court and was sentenced to 24 years in jail.

3. David Khong Siak Meng

Former lawyer David Khong Siak Meng, 55, went on the run for more than 15 years after misappropriating $88,000 of his clients’ money in 2007.

He fled to Shanghai, where he remained a fugitive until he sent back to Singapore on Sept 23, 2022.

He was sentenced to three years’ jail in March 2023 after pleading guilty to one count of criminal breach of trust.