A former insurance agent with AXA in Singapore has been sentenced to two years and four months in jail for defrauding clients and acquaintances of more than S$193,000 (US$144,100).
The sentence was handed down on Tuesday after Xie Huirong, 27, pleaded guilty to six charges of cheating, with an additional 11 charges considered during sentencing.
According to a CAN report, Xie's tenure at AXA, spanning from August 2017 to November 2019, saw him engaging in leveraged cryptocurrency trading, resulting in significant financial losses. To recover his funds, he misled his clients using various deceptive methods related to their insurance policies.
Among Xie's victims were a single mother, a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and a supermarket cashier. Xie exploited his position as an insurance agent to deceive the single mother, who was also his friend's aunt, into paying her insurance premiums in advance under the guise of securing better returns. She was duped into transferring S$16,000 to Xie, only to later discover that AXA had continued deducting premiums from her account.
Xie also deceived his own aunt by falsely claiming she could invest in non-existent shares offered by Temasek Holdings, leading her to hand over S$55,000 in cash. Only S$7,500 was repaid following police investigations.
Another victim, an NTU research fellow, was misled into transferring S$30,000 to Xie for advance payment of insurance premiums, purportedly to gain better returns. Xie admitted to losing this money in investments when confronted and only partially repaid the victim.
Furthermore, Xie defrauded a couple of S$20,000 by falsely promising to sell them 800 boxes of thermometers during the COVID-19 pandemic peak in March 2020. He also cheated a foreign student of S$4,000 by pretending to secure a student pass for her and forging an approval letter from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority.
AXA became aware of Xie's fraudulent activities and conducted an interview with him in late 2019, leading to police investigations. He has since made partial restitution of approximately S$77,000 to some of his victims.
Prosecutors sought a jail term of 33 to 43 months, citing the substantial monetary loss and “some intangible unquantifiable harm” caused by Xie's offences. They emphasised the premeditated nature of his crimes against clients and the abuse of Temasek's name and reputation. Xie was granted permission to start his jail term on Feb. 7.
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