Indian jailed in Singapore for duping firm into paying inflated prices

Singapore, Aug 2 (IANS) A 68-year-old Indian national has been jailed for seven months after he admitted to cheating a company into paying inflated prices for almost seven years in Singapore, a media report said.

Eldo Thottungal Mathai, director of freight-forwarding services firm Indus Global Line (IGL), pleaded guilty to three counts of cheating on Tuesday, The Straits Times reported.

According to court documents, Eldo, also a permanent resident in Singapore, hatched a plan in 2011 with Hussain Naina Mohamed, another Indian national who worked at Utracon Structural Systems.

Hussain was also a partner at another company, Al Rahman Enterprises & Trading (Aret), which Utracon was unaware of.

Both men agreed in 2011 on a plan for IGL to submit inflated quotations to Utracon for freight-forwarding services.

It was decided that Eldo would first send an email with a legitimate quotation to Hussain’s Aret e-mail account, following which the latter would respond with instructions on the mark-up amount.

Subsequently, Eldo would send the marked-up quotation to Hussain at his Utracon work e-mail address, and Hussain would then review it in his capacity as the company’s assistant shipping manager, The Straits Times reported.

In the three charges against Eldo, Utracon was cheated into paying IGL inflated amounts of around S$374,529.

The total mark-ups for these quotations were S$33,231.

All the marked-up amounts went to Aret. After IGL received payment from Utracon, Eldo would pass Hussain the mark-ups in cash, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jonathan Tan was cited as saying by the newspaper.

“While the accused did not receive the mark-ups, he profited from the business that IGL received by virtue of the deception that he and Hussain applied on Utracon,” Tan said.

The two continued to fool Utracon, which ended up paying about S$417,367 to IGL from October 2011 to August 2018.

Tan sought six to eight months jail for Eldo, citing the need for deterrence and the significant difficulty in detecting the offences.

Hussain was sentenced to 30 months in jail in May after he pleaded guilty to nine counts of cheating involving more than S$2.5 million and one count of moving a portion of his ill-gotten gains out of Singapore.

Including the offences he committed along with Eldo, Hussain duped Utracon into making payments totalling over S$5.1 million to companies linked to him.