Preventive detention for man who took $2k bribe from convicted ‘Ferrari woman’

SINGAPORE - A man who took a bribe of $2,000 from a woman after claiming he could help make her prison life easier was on Friday sentenced to seven years’ preventive detention – a prison regime for repeat offenders aimed at protecting the public.

Francis Ng Wee Keng, 49, was also fined $2,000 and disqualified from holding or obtaining all classes of driving licences for life.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to offences including graft, house trespass to commit theft and driving while under disqualification.

The woman, Shi Ka Yee, who

was sentenced to six weeks’ jail in 2018

at the age of 73, had committed a string of widely publicised offences including punching a motorist after he refused to let her Ferrari pass in 2014.

She later gave the $2,000 to Ng,

who had been in and out of jail for offences including multiple counts of theft. He had even gone through two stints of corrective training.

Both preventive detention and corrective training are severe prison regimes aimed at tackling recalcitrant offenders.

Corrective training is imposed when the court finds that the offender needs a substantial period of training for reformation. The maximum period for corrective training is 14 years.

In preventive detention, a recalcitrant offender aged over 30 receives a substantial period of imprisonment to protect the public. The detention order can last up to 20 years.

In earlier proceedings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang said: “(Shi’s) case was widely published by the local newspapers and (Ng) read about her offences and the criminal proceedings against her when he was serving his sentence in prison some time in the middle of 2018.”

He was later released from prison and contacted Shi in early October 2018.

They met in a hotel, where he told her that he knew some prison officers who could purportedly look out for her when she served her sentence, which was to begin later that month.

The DPP said: “The truth was that the accused did not know any prison officer personally who could help Shi. The accused and Shi then exchanged contact numbers.

“(Between Oct 8 and 17, 2018), the accused updated Shi about the favours he had done for her, such as calling and speaking to the Commissioner of Prison about her case and arranging for Shi to meet up with two senior female prison officers, which he admitted to the CPIB (Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau) were lies.”

Ng then sent Shi messages via communication platform WhatsApp to ask for cash so that he could “entertain prison officers in order to build rapport with them”.

He claimed that he could tell them to help ensure her life behind bars would be easier, that she could keep her hair long and that she would not get bullied by other inmates.

Shi fell for Ng’s lies and passed him $2,000 on Oct 19, 2018. He used the money for his personal expenses and she started serving her sentence on Oct 25 that year.

The DPP said that the CPIB later found out what Ng had done.

Court documents did not disclose not state if Shi, a retired interior designer, has been dealt with in court over this case of graft.

In an unrelated offence, Ng entered a man’s home in Jalan Sultan near Beach Road in December 2019 and made off with $650 in cash.

The victim alerted the police after he viewed footage from a closed-circuit television camera that caught Ng entering the unit.

Officers raided Ng’s home on Jan 3, 2020, and found him in possession of items including multiple pieces of jewellery.

The DPP said there was reasonable suspicion that these were stolen and he “failed to account satisfactorily” for how he had them.

Defence lawyer Wee Hong Shern told the court that his client has been very well-behaved after coming back into custody.

Mr Wee added that Ng had also managed to convince other inmates to renounce their secret society affiliations.