SINGAPORE: A man who was roped into a scheme to deceive tech companies into delivering laptops for free using a PayPal glitch recruited four others into it but later felt guilty and lodged a police report.
He also made restitution not just for himself but for the friends he had recruited into the fraudulent scheme.
Jonathan Wee Jianwei, a 29-year-old Singaporean, was given a short detention order of 14 days on Tuesday (Jun 23). He will also have to perform 70 hours of community service within a year.
A short detention order is a community sentence which results in no criminal record and works as a deterrent by allowing an offender to experience prison life.
Wee pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to deceive Lenovo, with another two charges taken into consideration.
THE CASE
The case started with 31-year-old co-accused Calvin Fong Jun Jie, who contacted his primary school friend Alden Low Yoong Theng, also 31 in late 2019.
Fong said he had an opportunity to make money involving the purchasing of laptops. He said the money would eventually be returned to Low after the laptops were delivered.
Fong showed Low how this worked by using a PayPal account to pay for laptops. The payment was deducted from Low’s bank account, but Fong assured him the money would be refunded within a week.
The laptops were delivered to Low’s address. Fong then collected his laptops and paid Low about 40 per cent of the purchase amount as “commission”.
Low later checked his bank account and found that the money he had paid for the laptops had indeed been refunded.
Sometime in February 2020, Low roped Wee into this scheme. They had served in the army together and were friends.
Low explained that participants would link their bank account to their PayPal account, and leave only S$100 (US$77) in their bank account. Low would then transfer money into the account to buy the laptops.
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