SINGAPORE, Nov 8 — For about a year, Tjheng A Liem pretended to be a wealthy person to her housemate, in the hope that he would be inclined to lend her huge sums of money.

The Indonesian woman kept up the charade by showing him various forged documents, purportedly from lawyers, banks and property developers. In total, she managed to convince the man to lend her about S$400,000.

Today Liem, 46, pleaded guilty to five forgery-related charges, with another seven taken into consideration for sentencing.

The prosecution is asking for a jail term of between 32 and 40 months.

The case will be heard again for sentencing next month, after District Judge Elton Tan approved the woman’s request for some time to settle her affairs and try to make further restitution to the 61-year-old victim.

What happened

The court heard that Liem came to know the victim, an Indonesian man, sometime in September 2021 when they were living in the same housing unit at People’s Park Complex in Chinatown.

They became friends and Liem later told the housemate that she had excess money from selling a property and some company shares, among others.

She then claimed that her bank accounts were frozen by the tax authority because she had "overdue taxes”.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Edwin Ho said that Liem told the victim all these to lead him to believe that she was wealthy, so that he would be more willing to lend money to her.

Liem later asked to borrow money from him while telling him that she had some personal problems. The housemate agreed, because he was hoping that he could eventually do business with her.

To sustain his belief that she was wealthy, she instructed someone based in Indonesia to help her forge several documents, which she then showed to the housemate.

It is not clear if any legal action is being taken against this person who helped her do this.

For a few months last year, Liem engaged in this scheme and the forged documents produced included a property title deed, legal documents and bank letters. Some were based on actual old documents that she had but with the details and content manipulated.

One fake document purportedly showed that she was to receive in excess of S$4 million for selling a private property.

Sometime in April last year, she showed the housemate a forged cheque that she was going to issue in his name, to convince him that she had instructed that part of the property sale proceeds would be channelled to him.

However, seeing that she had "constantly made excuses” to delay repayment of her loan, the housemate began suspecting that she was cheating him and made a police report in September last year.

By that time, he had already lent her more than 4.6 billion Indonesian rupiah and S$10,000 — or roughly equivalent to more than S$400,000 in total — in more than 70 transactions.

Liem has returned more than 1 billion rupiah to the victim, the court heard.

Seeking a total jail term of between 32 and 40 months, DPP Ho described Liem’s deception as "elaborate, persistent and sophisticated”, involving the forgery of different types of documents.

However, he took into consideration that she has made partial restitution, has no past criminal convictions and has pleaded guilty.

Asked by District Judge Tan for her mitigation plea, Liem, who was not represented by a lawyer and spoke through an Indonesian interpreter, said briefly that she was sorry, she regrets her actions and will not repeat them.

Prompted again by the judge if she had anything else to say, she sought a deferment in her sentencing to see to some personal matters, including getting her parents to Singapore from Batam to inform them in person that she was going to jail.

She said that she would like some time to raise money to pay back more money to the victim.

Her case will be heard again in mid-December.

For each forgery-related charge, she could be jailed up to 10 years and fined. — TODAY