TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Monday, Mar 18, 2024

Interpol seeks woman who ran elaborate exam cheating scam in Singapore

Interpol has issued an alert for a woman behind an elaborate exam-cheating scam in Singapore which involved phones and headphones taped to students.
Poh Yuan Nie, 57, fronted the racket together with three accomplices, who have all been jailed.

Poh, the former principal of a local tuition centre, had been due to begin a four-year sentence last September, but failed to surrender herself.

She is thought to have fled Singapore.

Police in the city-state issued an arrest warrant for Poh, also known as Pony, last November.

They applied for the Interpol "red notice" the following month and have appealed for information on her whereabouts.

A red notice is a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and arrest a person pending extradition or similar legal action.

The scam took place across several days in October 2016, during sittings for three tertiary entrance exams.

According to local media, Poh's Zeus Education Centre was engaged to provide tuition to six students - aged 17 to 20 - to help them pass their exams and enter local vocational colleges known as polytechnics.

Poh was paid 6,000 US dollars per student, as well as$1,000 in admission fees - but the money was to be fully refunded if they did not pass.

The students, all Chinese nationals, sat for the papers at different venues while wearing skin colored in ear headphones.

Mobile phones and Bluetooth devices were taped to their bodies by Poh and her accomplices, and carefully concealed under their clothes.

Poh's ex-girlfriend Tan Jia Yan, then aged 30, also sat for the papers as a private candidate. She did so with a camera phone attached to her chest via sticky tape, and hidden beneath her clothes.

Using FaceTime, Tan broadcast a livestream of the papers to Poh, her niece Fiona Poh and an employee Feng Riwen, who were waiting at the tuition centre.

The trio then worked out the answers and fed them to the students via their headphones. "If I heard them clearly, I should keep silent, if not, I should cough," testified one student.

The scheme unravelled when an exam supervisor heard unusual transmission sounds coming from one of the students, who came clean when questioned.

In 2020, Poh, her niece and Feng were convicted of 27 counts of cheating. They were each jailed for between two and four years.

A judge had called on the trio to testify in their defence, but they chose to remain silent. The prosecution argued that an adverse inference should be drawn from this, including the ultimate inference of guilt.

In 2019, Tan was jailed for three years on the same charges. At her sentencing, District Judge Kenneth Yap said that the sanctity of national exams had to be protected.

"The notion that students can buy results by resorting to cheating is offensive. It undermines the principle of meritocracy. It can't be that the rich can procure exam results," he said.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×