S$8 billion penny stock crash: Duo fail in appeal against sentences, lawyer to pay personal costs

The pair had artificially inflated the share prices of three penny stocks, Blumont, Asiasons and LionGold, from August 2012 to October 2013, using 189 securities trading accounts.

The bulk of their charges related to deceiving financial institutions by concealing their involvement when giving instructions to make orders and trades.

Soh, who was also found guilty of witness tampering by asking four witnesses to lie to investigators after the stock market crash, was remanded and attended the hearing via video-link.

The scheme unravelled on Oct 4, 2013 when the share prices of the three companies crashed, erasing S$8 billion in market capitalisation from SGX.

The appeal against sentence was heard by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Tay Yong Kwang and Senior Judge Andrew Phang.

Soh’s lawyers had argued that the sentence was not proportionate to his offending, and that certain factors he was allegedly unaware of at the time had been taken into account as aggravating factors, resulting in a “more onerous” total sentence than was warranted.

Quah largely adopted Soh’s arguments but sought to downplay her role and involvement in the scheme, said Chief Justice Menon who delivered the verdict.

The court rejected both lines of argument and “entirely” dismissed the appeals against sentence.

As for Mr Sivanathan, he apologised for his allegations of judicial bias and withdrew them in November 2025. He also tendered a formal written apology to the court.

The Chief Justice said that while this does not absolve him of his misconduct, he has “expunged some of its sting” through his apology and retraction of the “ill-founded allegations”.