Singapore—A 31-year-old man was fined S$4,200 by the State Courts on Thursday (Feb 25) for stalking a woman who had sold him an insurance policy.
Simon Lee Yong Sheng entered a guilty plea to one count of unlawful stalking of the woman, whose name and age have remained undisclosed for her protection.
The two met at a Prudential insurance roadshow in 2017, after which he began to pursue her romantically. The insurance agent spurned his romantic advances and told him she only wanted to communicate with him for professional reasons.
Unfortunately, he would not take no for an answer and continued to pursue her, to the point of following her and showing up at her clients’ homes.
He repeatedly ignored her requests to stop contacting her, and at one point threatened that he would cancel the insurance policy he had bought from her.
Lee also sent her gifts to her workplace on special occasions. The victim asked him to stop doing this, as it could get her into trouble with her superiors.
By 2019, the unwanted attention and harassment she received became alarming, as Lee followed her on the train from Novena MRT station to Newton MRT station on July 16 of that year.
Later that year, on Nov 8, 2019, the woman met clients at a cafe along Gopeng Street when Lee arrived. He refused to leave, which caused the insurance agent to fear for her safety.
She then asked her clients if she could come home with them. There, Lee waited at the void deck of the HDB block.
Last year, on Feb 11, Lee followed the woman to work and only left when the woman asked for help from security. A workmate of hers then called the police.
Because Lee was the insurance agent’s client, she needed to remain contactable for insurance policy-related issues and she could not block him from reaching her. Neither could she end their professional relationship as it would affect her work, according to Deputy Public Prosecutor Yee Jia Rong.
The DPP asked that Lee be given the maximum fine of $5,000 since he had stalked his victim for an “exceptionally lengthy span,” he said, even after she had asked him to stop on numerous occasions.
However, Mr Irving Choh, the defense lawyer, asked that a fine of only $3,000 be meted out to his client.
Along with the fine, Lee could have ended up in jail for as long as one year.
/TISG
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