Two university students were each given a probation term of 21 months and 180 hours of community service for their involvement in a fake Jay Chou concert ticket scam.
Walden Lee Guo Quan and Ang Teck Wee, both 23 now, were convicted for scamming a total of $7,670 off 11 victims between March and May last year — that worked out to about $340 to $800 from each individual.
Lee, a Singapore Institute of Management student, pleaded guilty to three charges involving a sum of $2,350; while Ang, a student at Nanyang Technological University, pleaded guilty to two charges involving $1,440. The remaining charges were also taken into account during the sentencing.
Here’s the TL;DR version of how the scam worked:
- Lee had the original tickets for the concert.
- He hatched a plot to cheat others when he realised the response for the concert was immense and convinced Ang to join him in the scam.
- Ang made copies of the original tickets on his computer after receiving the images from Lee.
- Both placed the bogus tickets up for sale on Carousell under their own accounts.
- The first victim, a 24-year-old woman, paid Ang $720 for a pair of the ‘tickets’.
- She checked the tickets with Sports Hub and realized they were fakes, but was unable to contact Ang.
- She filed a report on May 26, and about 10 other victims followed suit when they arrived at the concert and discovered their tickets were fake.
For each count of the scam, both men could have been fined and sentenced to a maximum of three years in jail.
