From his makeshift stall at Block 102 along Yishun Avenue 5, a swindling fortune teller made his fortune by cheating two women out of over $40,000 of their money.
49-year-old temple medium Soh Kok Ping managed to gain the trust of one victim to part with $30,000, while persuading the other to donate $10,000 to his temple, Channel NewsAsia reports.
Lily Tan had been convinced of Soh’s ‘powers’ when her wheelchair-bound husband’s conditions improved after the fortune teller performed prayers for him. After confiding with him about financial troubles, Soh suggested that she pass him some gold jewellery so he could find out how much they were worth. Instead of doing so, he went ahead and pawned them out for $8,890 and kept the money for himself.
Tan’s husband died a month later, and Soh took the chance to ask her to invest $30,000 in his friend’s shop, claiming it was doing very well. She handed over the money to him willingly.
As for the second victim, Soh conned the woman into donating $10,000 to his temple after telling her that God needed her to do so to ward off bad luck. Despicable, we know.
For his offences of cheating, the fortune teller was sentenced to 20 months in jail. Bet he didn’t foresaw that.
