Ex-dealer who made $255K by illegally manipulating prices of SGX shares sentenced to 9 months in prison

Court documents named six SGX exchanges that Oh targeted: Bonvests Holdings, Bund Center Investment, GSH Corporation, Hotel Properties, Sinarmas Land and The Straits Trading Company. Court documents stated that these meters were targeted because they were illiquid.

The bulk of his ill-gotten gains came from 119 instances of the Bund Center Investment booth, netting him $201,159.

Between August 2020 and January 2022, Oh withdrew $175,810 from his CFD trading account at IG Asia and transferred the money to his personal bank accounts at POSB and OCBC.

He would occasionally withdraw money from his POSB account for living expenses. After he was arrested and charged in 2023, police froze $130,198 in his IG Asia and OCBC accounts while he was under investigation.

Oh pleaded guilty to two charges under the Securities and Futures Act for his transactions with Bund Center Investment and Sinarmas Land.

Four other charges related to operations on the remaining meters were also taken into account during the sentencing.

At sentencing, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) David Koh asked the State Courts to sentence Oh to between 11 and 14 months in prison.

“The accused made significant ill-gotten gains at the expense of IG Asia,” DPP Koh said in written submissions, adding: “The offenses were also committed with significant premeditation and planning.”

Oh’s attorneys, Nicolas Tang and Jolene Gwee of Farallon Law Firm, argued for her to be sentenced to 16 to 24 weeks in prison.

Police said on October 29 that Oh’s conviction was the result of a joint investigation by the Singapore Police Force’s Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), following guidance from the Singapore Exchange Regulations.

In March 2017, former DBS Vickers trader Dennis Tey Thean Yang was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison for misleading the securities market and making $30,239 in profits from his illegal trades.

In a statement following Tey’s sentencing, the MAS said it was “the first conviction of market abuse under a joint investigation arrangement with CAD”.

The second case occurred in July 2021, when former account manager Ee Cho Lian was sentenced to six weeks in prison and fined $30,000 for 107 fake orders and 60 fake transactions, where she made a profit of $24,196.

Oh’s conviction and sentencing is the third reported such case, and his illegal profit of $255,385 is the largest amount yet.

He has since paid full compensation to IG Asia.