Man shot in police raid gets jail for offences including theft, cheating

A man who was shot by a police officer during a raid had committed theft, cheating and drug-related offences before the incident in 2020.

Yesterday, Prakash Mathivanan, 38, was sentenced to jail for three years and 10 months after he pleaded guilty to eight charges. A further 23 charges were taken into consideration during his sentencing.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Theong Li Han told the court that Prakash, a man named Gardi Bandi and Prakash's girlfriend conspired to buy items using stolen credit card information and sell them.

Gardi obtained the credit card details for Prakash, who promised to pay Gardi $100 for each set of details.

Court documents did not disclose how Gardi managed to get hold of the credit card details.

Gardi uploaded photographs of the credit card as attachments in an e-mail message and saved the message as a draft in an e-mail account set up for Prakash to access.

The UOB credit card details of a person named Lee Su Lynn was used to pay for several items ordered on May 2, 2017, worth $2,968.80 in total.

On May 24 that year, Prakash and Gardi agreed that Prakash would book a two-night stay at Raffles Hotel for Gardi using the stolen details of an American Express card held by a person named Solomon Thomas Fernandez.

Using the data, Prakash reserved a two-night stay at the hotel, costing $1,401.60.

On May 25 that year, American Express alerted Mr Fernandez to several unauthorised transactions on his card and he cancelled it.

But Prakash called American Express, pretending to be Mr Fernandez, and had a new card delivered to a cafe owned by Gardi.

Prakash had also committed other offences, including stealing an iPad from his stepbrother's wife in April 2017.

On Nov 5, 2020 - when the shooting occurred - he was arrested around midnight in an apartment by police officers and a search turned up at least 6.38g of methamphetamine.

The police had said previously that a man was shot in the abdomen that morning during a struggle with officers who raided an apartment in City Suites condominium in Balestier Road.

Three policemen in plain clothes, armed with revolvers and handcuffs, raided the apartment to arrest four people suspected of being involved in a series of cheating cases.

Prakash, who has charges pending against him, will return to court on Sept 8.