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Man jailed for swapping diamonds with crystals
By Shaffiq Alkhatib, TODAY | Posted: 04 August 2011 0733 hrs
SINGAPORE: A former sales manager who visited jewellery shops and swapped five genuine diamonds with look-alike crystals was jailed for a year on Wednesday.
Loh Han Kok (picture), 39, targeted five different stores last year and stole more than S$63,000 worth of diamonds.
He pleaded guilty to three charges, while four others were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Loh used to work in the jewellery industry before he decided to dabble in multi-level marketing. But he did badly and racked up large credit card bills instead.
The court heard that Loh stole the most expensive diamond, valued at nearly S$33,000, from a Lee Hwa Jewellery outlet at Causeway Point shopping centre in Woodlands.
He visited the store on December 2 and asked to view the 1.5-carat gemstone.
A customer service executive took it out and placed the diamond on a tray so that Loh could examine it under a scope.
Loh then asked if he could take a look at the diamond certificate and the service executive obliged. He left Loh with the gemstone while he retrieved the document.
While he was gone, Loh switched the diamond with a fake and pocketed the genuine gemstone.
The switch was only discovered 11 days later when another employee re-examined the store's loose diamonds and could not find a laser inscription, usually found on genuine gemstones, on an item she thought was a 1.5-carat diamond.
The police were alerted to the offences after a jewellery store in Yishun lodged a report stating that one of its customers had switched a genuine diamond with a fake.
Loh was arrested following an investigation which revealed that he had used a similar ruse in other shops islandwide.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Amardeep Singh said that, after stealing the diamonds, Loh would sell them to a company known as To Win Enterprises.
He received more than S$23,000 for three of them, said the DPP.
- TODAY
