54-year-old Dmitriy Shport, a Singapore permanent resident from Russia, was sentenced to 4 months imprisonment on Friday after pleading guilty to one charge of forgery for cheating.
He had forged an Option to Purchase (OTP) to cheat a victim into believing that he sold his property in Deccember 2021 when the sale was actually made on April 2017.
He used the money that he earned from the 2017 sale of the property to pay off his other debts, and also to finance his company.
What happened?
Shport wanted to buy private property in Singapore in early 2015 and approached his friend, Ms Irina Sergeva, who gave him a loan of $1.71 million.
Shport was supposed to repay the money to her by 31 March 2016 at an interest rate of 8% per year, according to their loan agreement.
On 1 April 20126, both of them then agreed to extend the repayment date to 31 December 2018, but Shport failed to make any payment to Irina by the end of 2021.
Shport deceived Irina on 21 December 2021 into believing that he had just sold the property and could now repay her the money.
He did this to stop her from taking action against him for his failure to repay the loan.
Shport sent Irina screenshots of an OTP exercising the sale of the property for $2.4 million in an attempt to convince her that the sale was legitimate.
He had altered the dates in the original OTP for the condominium unit’s sale back in 2017, and sent the edited document to Irina.
Irina eventually found out that the sale took place in 2017 and not in 2021 as Shport claimed, and a police report was then made.
Shport was then arrested on 25 July earlier this year, and his loan has still not been repaid.