Acting on behalf of a loanshark, 33-year-old Samroeng Sompop came to Singapore on an all-expense-paid trip just to harass debtors who owed money to unlicensed moneylenders.
One of the acts he was hired to do: splash red paint on the Modern Montessori International pre-school at The Pinnacle@Duxton, where one of the debtor’s children attended. Notes containing the names of the debtor and his family, as well as their home address, were found on the floor nearby. Red paint was found splashed on the pre-school’s door, gate, walls and windows.
Sompop has since been sentenced to 15 months in jail and three strokes of the cane, reports The Straits Times, in a rare case of loanshark harassment being extensively outsourced.
Investigations revealed that the debtor had taken a loan from a loanshark in August 2015, but he defaulted on payments. The harassment began a month later, causing the debtor to move out and transfer his children to another childcare centre.
It was on Jan 13 last year that Sompop came to Singapore on a trip sponsored by an individual who went by the name of Max in Thailand. The same day he arrived, 56-year-old Lee Tiow Kiong picked him up from the hotel and gave him the job of committing harassment at the pre-school, for which he’d be paid SGD800 (20,000 baht).
After the deed was done, Lee transported Sompop to Queen Street, where he took a taxi to Johor Bahru before making his own way back to Thailand. Essentially, he came here, defaced a childcare centre and left the country — all in one day.
Sompop was nabbed at Changi Airport last month after Lee revealed his involvement in the crime. In court, the Thai man pleaded guilty to causing annoyance to the childcare centre staff with Lee, and claimed that he didn’t know it was a pre-school.
