The well known aesthetic medical doctor, who gave up his cushy job to become a prominent local street dog rescuer, Dr Siew Tuck Wah, gets conned and he has vowed to not rest until he has retrieved the money. And how much money is it?
$500.
But in a Facebook post, he explains why it is important for him to get back the $500 from the person who conned him.
“All of SOSD’s funds come from donations. Every cent is precious. $500 came from the goodwill of our kind supporters. And $500 is enough to feed our shelter dogs for 3 days, sterilise 2 dogs, or pay for the petrol to enter Jurong Island to help dogs there for a month,” he explains.
“$500 not be a big amount to many, but to a charity who does not receive any funding from the government or corporates, it is a lot of money. $500 is sometimes double of what a fundraising initiative in a school raises. It is what I now spend on food for a month,” he added.
Dr Siew lost the $500 last year, when a man who pretended to want to work for Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD) got them to hire him, pay him salary, but refused to come to work. Later, SOSD realised that the man just wanted a letter of employment for him to defer his National Service liabilities.
In his post, Dr Siew talks about other ex-employees of Pet Guru, a company he started, and said that this former staff, “misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars- but they covered their tracks well so we could not track them down”.
“In the end, these people gain something selfish, but the ripples they send down create so much more. Many more suffer because of their actions”, he lamented. But swore to “not rest until this $500 is retrieved, and placed back where it should rightfully be- to support the rescue operations of SOSD”.