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SINGAPORE: An unemployed gambler began accompanying his mother on grocery shopping trips after his father rejected his request to borrow money, taking advantage of her dementia and asking her to borrow a total of about 42,000 Singapore dollars (31,660 U.S. dollars).
The money was deposited into his parents’ joint account and was originally intended to pay for the elderly woman’s medical expenses.
Chow Zhida Gary, 37, was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Tuesday (Aug 6) for a crime described by prosecutors as “brutal”.
The Singaporean man pleaded guilty to three charges of theft.
Three additional charges were considered, including shoving his elderly father and threatening police officers, saying in Mandarin: “You want to play big games, come on, my life is terrible, you want to play with me, come on, I have two kids.”
The court heard that Zhou’s parents were both retirees in their 80s.
They share a bank account from which anyone can withdraw cash.
At the time of the crime, Zhou was unemployed and had a huge debt from gambling.
He often asked his father for money, but was always refused.
Mr Zhou knew that his mother suffered from dementia, so he often accompanied her to buy groceries.
Between May and June 2020, he went with his mother to withdraw cash at least eight times.
He knew she was mentally incapable of understanding why she would help him get the cash, so he didn’t tell his father about it.
Each time, he was careful to instruct his mother to withdraw small amounts so as not to trigger alerts to his father about large withdrawals.
A total of S$38,350 was withdrawn from his parents’ bank accounts. Mr Chew kept some of the cash and deposited the rest into his own account.
In late July 2020, Mr Zhou’s father discovered that there was only about S$49 left in the bag, even though he remembered there was more than S$36,000 in the bag.
He has reported the case to the police.
A few weeks later, Mr Zhou accompanied his mother to a shopping mall again and asked her to withdraw another S$4,000.
In January 2021, Zhou’s father received a notice from the bank that the amount in the joint account did not reach the minimum amount required to keep the account open.
As the old man needed money to pay for his wife’s medical expenses, he reported the case to the police again.
Besides stealing money from his own parents, Mr Chew also stole jewellery from his 76-year-old aunt, worth about S$5,000, and pawned it.
When questioned by the police, Mr Zhou lied and said his mother asked him to help get the money to give to other family members or friends.
When he saw a large amount of money deposited into his account, he admitted that he had taken advantage of his mother’s mental illness to defraud money for himself.
To date, he has not made any compensation to his parents and aunt.
The prosecutor requested a 16-month jail term, noting the value of the stolen items or cash in all charges was about S$55,000.
He said this case was different from others because it involved a “gross abuse of trust” on Zhou’s mother, who was a vulnerable victim.
He said the elderly woman needed money for medical treatment, but Zhou took advantage of her dementia and stole the money until “there was really nothing left to steal.”
“Such cruel treatment of such a trusting and vulnerable victim is a salient feature of this case and justifies such a severe sentence,” prosecutors said.
He said that apart from pleading guilty, Zhou had no way to mitigate his guilt, and he refused to compensate for the losses or cooperate with the police.
Mr. Zhou, who does not have a lawyer, did not plead guilty. He simply asked that his sentence be deferred until August 12, arguing that that was his son’s birthday.
His request was approved.
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