SINGAPORE, Mar 31 — A business consultant, who thought his real estate agent was cheating him over a property deal and made her perform a sexual act on him, was jailed 12 weeks yesterday.

Joshua Yip Ka Wai later threatened to circulate the video he had secretly recorded of the act if she did not make an upfront payment of S$20,000 for the deal.

The 36-year-old Singaporean, who ran Joshua Yip Training & Consultancy, pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal intimidation.

District Judge Carol Ling considered a third similar charge for sentencing. Yip will begin serving his sentence on April 8.

The victim, a 30-year-old Singaporean, cannot be named due to a court order.

The court heard that Yip and the victim got to know each other through mutual friends around 2010. They then stayed in contact.

On Sept 4, 2018, he told her that his business partner based in Vietnam wanted to buy two private residential properties in Singapore.

Over several face-to-face conversations and email exchanges, they agreed to a profit-sharing arrangement. They were expected to earn about S$290,000 in commissions from the property deal, and Yip expected to receive at least 60 per cent of this.

The victim travelled to Ho Chi Minh City on Nov 29, 2018 to promote Singapore residential property projects to Yip’s business partner and other prospective Vietnamese buyers. Yip was also present.

The next day, she had dinner with the business partner and another property agent without Yip.

He grew angry upon learning of this and became concerned that she was negotiating a separate agreement, which meant that he would miss out on any commission.

Yip then invited her to his apartment in Ho Chi Minh City. When she got there, he told her that she had handled the deal poorly and expressed his desire for the other property agent to be left out of it.

He also told her that if she wished to continue with their profit-sharing agreement, she had to perform oral sex on him.

She agreed and he surreptitiously filmed the act with his mobile phone. They returned to Singapore shortly afterwards.

On Dec 18, 2018, they met for dinner in Woodlands and he told her about the video.

He then threatened to send emails to others, such as the Council for Estate Agencies and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, containing the video and a message that she had obtained property deals in exchange for sexual favours.

This was unless she could make upfront payment of S$20,000 for the deal within the next three days.

On Dec 24, Yip got his Vietnamese employee, Dung Tran, to send her another message as she had not sent the money. Yip had previously given the other man a copy of the video when he was in Vietnam.

On Yip’s instructions, Dung Tran then extracted three screenshots and sent them with a message to the victim through WhatsApp.

The message was laced with vulgarities, as well as a threat to send the video and screenshots to her friends and websites Mothership.sg and "Goodfeed” — apparently a reference to Goodyfeed.

For each charge of criminal intimidation, Yip could have been jailed for up to two years or fined, or both. — TODAY