He was supposed to help a customer buy a Ferrari car, but Daniel Lewis Lim siphoned around $450,000 to fuel his gambling habit and pay off personal expenses.
Lim, 38, was sentenced to four years and eight months’ jail on Monday (29 May) after being convicted of six counts of criminal breach of trust. Another 10 related charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that in June 2015, Liow Ming Yew, 34, had asked Lim, then a car salesman from Wheeler Dealers SG, to source for a Ferrari which he was interested in buying. Lim managed to broker a deal for the Ferrari with a seller.
After viewing the car on 7 July 2015, Liow decided to buy the car for $565,000 and handed over a cheque deposit of $65,000 to Lim. Liow also signed a sales agreement prepared by Lim.
A few days later, Liow gave Lim another cheque for the sum of $527,000 to pay for the rest of the sale price and other expenses, including insurance, road tax and repairs. Lim promised to help Liow transfer vehicle ownership to him once the paperwork and repairs were done.
Despite his promise, Lim delayed the transfer of ownership repeatedly while giving excuses to Liow. Between 16 and 19 July, he converted a total of $140,000 of the money he received from Liow into casino cash chips at Marina Bay Sands.
After a delay of more than a month, Liow sent a letter to Wheeler Dealers on 11 August 2015 demanding for a refund. Liow found out a day later that Lim was carrying out the deal in his personal capacity. Following the revelation, Liow decided to file a police report.
Investigations showed that even though Lim had cashed in both cheques paid to him, he only paid for a deposit of $135,000 for the purchase of the Ferrari. He also paid $8934.46 for pre-sales servicing and insurance.
As a result, only $143,934.46 of the $592,000 given by Liow had gone into the payment for the Ferrari. Lim admitted that he had misappropriated the remaining money to fund his gambling habit, pay off debts, his HDB housing loan, and other personal expenses.
Of the misappropriated sum, only $284,000 was recovered by the police.
Separately, Lim had also misappropriated a total of $103,914.50 in payments to Wheeler Dealers between June 2014 and May 2015. He failed to hand in the sums of money after closing deals and collecting payments on behalf of his company.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Goh asked for a six-year jail sentence, saying that a “significant financial loss” was caused. The prosecution also cited Lim’s premeditation as an aggravating factor, describing the offences as “alarming, insidious and malignant”.
Lim’s lawyer asked for a sentence of three years and six months.
In delivering the sentence, District Judge John Ng described the jail term would be “severe”, given that the amount involved was nearly half a million dollars. He noted that the police only managed to recover around half the sum.
