SINGAPORE: A Thai woman who lived decadently after starting a luxury watch and handbag resale business with her husband in Singapore continued to charge customers for expensive goods despite financial problems and knowing that he could not deliver the items.

When hundreds of police reports involving millions of dollars started piling up against them, Pansuk Siriwipa and her husband Pi Jiapeng hid in a truck container and left Singapore.

They were later arrested in Malaysia and taken back to Singapore to face the music with Pansuk’s fraudulent trading charges amounting to more than $25 million.

On Tuesday (October 29), she was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

She pleaded guilty to 30 charges, including fraudulent trading and cheating, with a further 150 charges pending.

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Pansuk and Pi, who married in September 2020, started a business called Tradenation selling luxury watches in Singapore in May 2021.

They opened a second company, Tradeluxury, around January 2022 to sell luxury bags.

Pansuk was the main decision maker for both companies, communicating with customers, sourcing suppliers and arranging the deliveries of goods.

Both companies would primarily sell luxury watches or handbags on a pre-order basis, offering prices 10 to 20 percent lower than local resellers by purchasing products from cheaper overseas suppliers.

From late 2021 to early 2022, Tradenation began to experience supply difficulties due to shipping delays and other issues with overseas suppliers.

The two companies started operating at a loss.

Pansuk had known since February 2022 that the two firms might not be able to honor accepted orders because they lacked funds. By the end of that month, the companies were in dire financial straits, with $1.8 million in net debt.

Despite this, she continued to take orders and payments from customers, using the funds to buy stock to fulfill previous orders.

Funds from pre-orders of bags under Tradeluxury were used to fulfill watch orders for Tradenation customers, and customers were occasionally asked if they wanted to send purchased goods to the company for sale and “bring” the proceeds to their next purchase.

By the end of March 2022, the two companies had net debt with a shortfall of nearly $9 million.

Despite this, Pansuk continued to receive orders, defrauding customers who had made payments for pre-orders.

As a result, 166 victims were defrauded of $12 million for goods they never received.

While both companies were operating at a loss, the couple continued to rack up significant expenses, funded by their clients.

Pansuk received a salary of US$10,000 per month from Tradenation from January to June 2022 and directed client funds to buy a US$2.4 million property in Bangkok in her mother’s name.

She also used $58,000 to pay for a private jet to Bangkok for a vacation and $140,000 as a down payment on a Corvette in her husband’s name.

Between May and August 2022, 187 police reports were filed against Pansuk and her husband for unfulfilled luxury goods orders from December 2021 to June 2022.

Pi was arrested on 27 June 2022 and released on bail. His passport was handed over to the police as one of his bail conditions and Pansuk’s passport was also handed over to the police under a different order.

While being investigated, the couple illegally left Singapore due to increasing customer complaints.

They met truck driver Mohamed Alias ​​on 4 July 2022 at an industrial park in Ang Mo Kio and later hid in a container compartment behind the truck.

They later passed through Tuas Checkpoint without presenting their passports to immigration officers.

An arrest warrant was issued against them by state courts later that month, and Thai and Malaysian police helped locate the pair in Malaysia on 11 August 2022.

They were arrested in Johor Bahru that dayhanded over to the Singapore Police Force and has since been arrested.

The prosecution asked for a prison term of 14 to 15 years for Pansuk, while the defense asked for a prison term between 12 years and eight months and 13 years and seven months.

Deputy Public Prosecutor David Koh said Pansuk had masterminded a scheme to defraud and defraud a total of 189 victims, and the sums involved made it “one of the largest multi-victim scams in recent memory”.

“At the same time, she continued to live large and spent clients’ funds on luxury items – not those promised to her clients, but for herself,” he said.

Defense lawyers Johannes Hadi and Sophia Ng from Eugene Thuraisingam’s law firm said Pansuk is remorseful and has finally informed the person who helped her escape that she will surrender.

They said she asked this man to contact the Royal Thai Police and she waited outside a hotel in Malaysia for the police to arrest her.

The judge backdated her prison sentence to August 2022, when she was remanded in custody.

Pi’s case is pending.