Tan Wen Jie, 28-years-old, an SUSS student, reportedly helped provide criminals with cars that were modified by cloning license plates so that they were “untraceable”.
Tan was convicted on three charges of cheating, as well as three charges of making false declarations relating to car exports and pleaded guilty to cheating the Singapore Customs and LTA.
Nine more similar charges will be taken into consideration during his sentencing.
Tan reportedly conspired with a Lee Wui Liang, 35-years-old, to profit by selling and renting cars that were deregistered, back in September 2018.
He would buy cars with COEs that were about to expire and resell the vehicles for profit.
Lee was in charge of modifyinig the cars in carparks that were quiet, by grinding off the chassis and engine numbers and replacing the license plate with a cloned one; as well as replacing the IC with another registered vehicle’s IU.
Tan was responsible for sourcing the replacement IUs and cloned licensed plates.
This is to prevent the vehicles from being traced when they were used for illegal purposes, and they were sold and rented on Carousell through a middleman who earned a commission.
The court heard that the vehicles were used for criminal activities.
Tan also helped to facillitate the preparation of the documents to make it appear as it the cars had already been or were due to be exported.
He did so by liaising with people from Scrap Car Shop and Absolute Motors, paying them to help him do the paperwork without verifying the status of the cars.
The paperwork were then sent to LTA and Customs, but his entire operation fell through after police managed to trace one of the cars used in a case of Ah Long harassment.
Investigations then led to the arrest of Tan, Lee and their accomplices.
Tan faces a total of 77 cahrges and his case is still under trial.
He is currently out on a bail of $10,000 and is due to return to court on 25 March 2021.