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SINGAPORE \u2014 The founder of Surrey Hills Holdings \u2014 best known for its Surrey Hills Grocer cafe chain \u2014 has been charged with multiple counts of cheating after she allegedly duped a woman into handing her more than $400,000.<\/p>\n
Pang Gek Teng, 37, who is no longer the chief executive of the company, was also charged on May 29 with one count of criminal breach of trust involving over $240,000, as well as one count each of attempted cheating and forgery.<\/p>\n
She now faces 12 charges in total.<\/p>\n
Pang, a Singaporean, allegedly duped a woman into handing her more than $400,000 in total over eight occasions between 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
Among other things, Pang is accused of cheating the woman of the largest amount on Jan 4, 2019, by pretending to be two people known as \u201cDesmond\u201d and \u201cDerrick\u201d.<\/p>\n
She is said to have assumed such characters to dupe the woman into believing that a private investigator had reported seeing her husband at a bank branch in Serangoon Garden, asking about her account.<\/p>\n
Pang allegedly claimed that the money was at risk of being frozen, and was to be transferred to \u201cDerrick\u201d for \u201csafekeeping\u201d.<\/p>\n
The woman is then said to have delivered $191,700 to Pang via a bank transfer.<\/p>\n
From April 3, 2023, to Feb 28, 2024, Pang allegedly committed criminal breach of trust involving more than $240,000 when she was a key executive officer at Surrey Hills Holdings.<\/p>\n
She is also accused of attempting to cheat a second woman on two occasions from December 2023 to February 2024.<\/p>\n
Pang allegedly tried to cheat this woman by deceiving her into believing that real estate agency Orchard Turn Developments had made three bulk orders of hampers to Surrey Hills Holdings valued at more than $800,000.<\/p>\n
Pang is also accused of committing forgery in January 2025 by amending an electronic invoice of a consulting firm, and allegedly used it to cheat this woman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman purportedly delivered $20,000 to Pang via a bank transfer.<\/p>\n
Pang is accused of cheating a third woman in March 2024 by communicating to her via WhatsApp and pretending to be the chief executive of Orchard Turn Developments.<\/p>\n
Pang\u2019s case will be mentioned again in court on July 10.<\/p>\n
For each count of cheating, an offender can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.<\/p>\n
Surrey Hills Holdings had terminated Pang\u2019s employment on March 26, 2025, following\u00a0discovery of \u201calleged financial misconduct\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also started legal proceedings against her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pang had started her career in an events company before enrolling in PSB Academy in Singapore, where she earned a degree in management and marketing.<\/p>\n
After working in a bank here, she pivoted to business but her ideas, which included a home-delivery service in Australia, failed to take off.<\/p>\n
In 2021, she returned to Singapore with A$362 (S$330) in her pocket, and started Surrey Hills Grocer with a $400,000 investment from a family friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It made its debut in Joo Koon in December that year.<\/p>\n
[[nid:736898]]<\/p>\n
This <\/em>article<\/em><\/a> was first published in <\/em>The Straits Times<\/em><\/a>. Permission required for reproduction.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2014 The founder of Surrey Hills Holdings \u2014 best known for its Surrey Hills Grocer cafe chain \u2014 has been charged with multiple counts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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