More jail time for man linked to case involving 832 foreign job seekers duped of over $600k
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Clarence Lim Jun Yao was sentenced to five years and six months jail and ordered to pay $174,385 in compensation in 2021.
PHOTO: ST FILE
SINGAPORE - A company director linked to a case involving 832 foreign job seek ers who were duped of over $600,000
After a trial, Clarence Lim Jun Yao and his accomplice, Terry Tan-Soo I-Hse, were convicted in 2019 of three counts of carrying on fraudulent businesses involving three firms. Lim, now 35, was sentenced to five years and six months’ jail and ordered to pay $174,385 in compensation in 2021.
He was sentenced to four months’ jail after pleading guilty on Wednesday to 178 charges under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act. These were linked to more than $300,000 in fees paid by foreign job seekers. Lim will serve his latest sentence after completing his earlier jail term.
Tan-Soo, then 42, pleaded guilty in 2020 to 258 charges under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act and Employment Agencies Act.
He was later sentenced to three years and four months’ jail and fined $121,000. He was also ordered to pay $57,660 as compensation.
The pair were involved in a ruse that saw 832 foreign job seekers duped into handing over more than $600,000 in upfront fees and other charges for non-existent jobs.
At the time of the offences, Tan-Soo headed a firm called Asia Recruit (AR), while Lim headed Asiajobmart (AJM) and UUBR International. A search with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority revealed that Lim is no longer a director at AJM. Instead, he is a director at two firms, Trade Capitol and Winnerforce M&C.
Some time around or prior to March 10, 2015, the pair devised a plan to use AR and AJM to operate fraudulent businesses – to purportedly provide job-related services and jobs to foreigners, when no such services were provided.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Nicholas Tan and Sarah Thaker told the court on Wednesday that no such jobs existed.
From March to July 2015, the offenders carried out this scheme, which was eventually foiled by a raid on AR’s premises by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
Instead of stopping, Lim and Tan-Soo used AR, AJM and UUBR to commit more offences from July 2015 to March 2016. AR continued to purportedly provide employment agency services to job seekers, and also encouraged them to pay an additional fee to AJM.
In exchange, AJM was supposed to post their resumes on its “online job portal” for interested employers to view. AR and AJM told the job seekers they would obtain a job interview within either seven or 14 days, depending on how much they paid in fees.
The DPPs said the promise of job interviews and the online job portal were a sham.
After the job seekers provided their contact information to AR and AJM, UUBR invited them for a so-called “interview” for a purported job at UUBR.
The interviews at UUBR were also shams, with UUBR offering jobs to the applicants on the condition that they first pay fees for purported compulsory training. UUBR had no intention or ability to hire them. None of the job seekers eventually worked at UUBR, even though they had paid the fees.
From August to November 2015, UUBR submitted 178 work pass applications to MOM for the job seekers. Lim, who was then heading the firm, did so despite knowing the applications would fail, said the DPPs.
“This failure allowed UUBR to blame MOM for disallowing the foreigners to work, and to claim that UUBR had fulfilled its obligations and was entitled to keep the fees for ‘training’,” they said.
“As UUBR had expected and intended, none of the 178 applications was successful.”
The job seekers paid more than $300,000 in fees to UUBR. Lim has not made any voluntary restitution.
