SINGAPORE: A man who injured himself on purpose and involved his friends in a scheme to deceive his mother so he could extort S$200,000 from her was arrested earlier this year.
A man named Zixiang asked his friends, Jaivin s/o Uthirapathy and Chen Shijie, to pretend to be kidnappers, Shin Min Daily News said in a report. Jaivin, 31, pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to cheat and mischief, and on Oct 26 (Thursday), received a seven-week hail sentence.
Zixiang and Jaivin have known each other for 10 years, and Shijie’s is a friend of Jaivin’s. The three men got together at Shijie’s condominium on Jan 6 of this year, originally having planned to play poker, but the game ended up getting cancelled because there weren’t enough players.
It was on this occasion that Zixiang sought the help of Jaivin and Shijie to deceive his mom. Shin Min says that because Jaivin owed Zixiang’s mother money, he said yes to helping his friend.
Zixiang planned on calling his mother to say he used to scam people, and that he had been kidnapped by some of his victims. Therefore, he needed his mother’s money so he would be set free. For added authenticity, he hit parts of his body, including his left arm, with a plastic chair.
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Early in the morning on Jan 7, he called his mother and sent her pictures of the injuries on his body, asking that she send him S$200,000 through a bank transfer. However, his mother told him that she did not have the amount he asked for. Zixiang then hurt himself on his left arm a second time, which resulted in swelling.
He then had Jaivin send a message to his mother, and asked the two other men to tell her they were his kidnappers. Zixiang told them to use obscenities in speaking with his mother and also to pretend to grow impatient with the situation, in order to get her to send money to him at once.
And even though the “kidnappers,” at Zixiang’s bidding, ended up asking her only for S$20,000, Zixiang’s mother only sent S$1,000.
However, when he went home, he discovered that his mother had already called the police. They were later able to find out the truth about the alleged kidnapping and the lies Zixiang had told his mother. This led to his arrest later on. /TISG