They are the most talked about couple in Singapore now and they are not even celebrities. After failing to deliver luxury goods worth $32M, their customers had made police reports.
11 July 2022
As you can see, their names were not mentioned and their faces were blocked out. The police didn’t want us to know who they are. Fine. We’ll let them investigate.
19 July 2022
Just a little bit more information and it doesn’t look good. You can see that their names were still not mentioned and their faces were still blocked out.
Interestingly, it is revealed that police actually arrested a 26-year-old Singaporean man on June 27 for his suspected involvement in cheating offences. His passport was impounded and he was released on bail the next day, pending the completion of investigations. His wife, 27, was also assisting the police with investigations and surrendered her passport to the police on June 30. The couple subsequently became uncontactable.
They were then found to have left Singapore on 4 July 2022. Their accomplice who helped them escape, has been arrested. Again, none of our business. We let them investigate.
20 July 2022
The police have revealed the identities of a couple who allegedly failed to deliver luxury goods worth about $32 million to customers and are appealing for information on their whereabouts.
Yao mo gao chor ah?
The fugitive couple had been uncontactable for nearly a month. They were found to have left Singapore on 4 July and only now they decided to reveal their identities and appeal for information on their whereabouts? Why didn’t they show us their faces earlier; like the moment they became uncontactable? Perhaps, somebody could have spotted them somewhere before they made it across the Causeway on 4 July. The trail is now as cold as sashimi.
So how did they escape? Did they do a Mas Selamat and swim across the narrow straits? Nope, they did something much easier. They simply hid in the container compartment of a lorry.
ICA said that it conducts checks on all arrivals and “adopts a risk management approach” for checks on departing conveyances, in order to balance smooth departure clearance and border security at the checkpoints.
Sure, we can all understand that with limited manpower and such a huge number of vehicles to clear, it’s not practical to check 100% of the vehicles all the time. But it was only a matter of days between the couple between uncontactable and their time of escape. If only they had checked more stringently (not necessarily 00%) on those few days, they could have nabbed them. But from the response given by ICA, it’s as if officers on the ground were not even alerted. I’d like to believe that if they were alerted, they would have responded in a way that would have increased the chances of their couple getting caught. Just say sorry, we’ve tried our best. Unfortunately, the response was evasive and downright disappointing.
It’s in the Thai news as well. I’ll translate the stuff not reported in our news media. While it can be confirmed that they had entered Malaysia from Singapore, Thai immigration in the south cannot confirm that the couple had entered the Thailand (certainly not legally). Thai netizens uncovered a few things about the woman’s background. Her father is a taxi driver and her mother sells papaya salad, vegetables and food to order at Nonthaburi. About 2 months ago, the couple returned to Thailand and bought a house worth 60 million baht. The only other thing they did apart from that was to make merit at the temple. Siriwipa’s mother who said that she does not have much contact with her daughter, claimed that soon after that purchase, the house was sold for 55 million baht because of debts owed to a “friend”.
Now, a sun fact about Pi Jiapeng which is 皮佳鹏 in Chinese. 皮 is a rather uncommon Chinese surname and as you can see, the man was born not in Singapore but became a Singaporean. Another fun fact. Pi sounds like ghost in Thai. Let’s hope we nab them soon.
And if you think that such monkey business only exists in among 奸商, it can also exist in our very prestigious academia.
Also a visiting professor at NUS, Peking University professor Chen Chunhua is facing questions over her educational background after members of the public fact-checked her claimed qualifications and found her doctoral degree was issued by an unlicensed university two decades ago.
According to her professional biography, the 58-year-old academic obtained a doctorate of business administration (DBA) from the European University of Ireland in 2001. The organisation has no website and isn’t included in the 25 legitimate Irish universities the Chinese education ministry acknowledges.
From one form of monkey business to another monkey business – this time with real monkeys.
Of course, we have the angry folks screaming at the town council and also the virtue signalling ones calling out the destruction of the monkeys’ natural habitat. Pragmatic as we are, nobody really sheds a tear for our disappearing forests. But everyone dreams of his own property getting more and more expensive for others and having a few distant cousins monkeying around is not going cut it.
And it’s not just Clementi that is having this problem. The troop at Punggol East were even more audacious, stealing and snatching things from the bakery and supermarket. Our experts came to the rescue of our deforestation plans, claiming that they are helping to guide the monkeys away and blaming this problem on “feeding”. Perhaps we should extend our racial harmony day and make it more inclusive by having a primate harmony day instead.
But wait a minute. Singapore just reported our 9th case of monkey pox. Will coexisting with our distant cousins help spread the virus?
In a written reply to Parliament on Jul 4, health minister Mr Ong Ye Kung explained why MOH is not recommending monkeypox vaccinations for the general population.
“Unlike COVID-19 vaccination, mass population-wide vaccination with the smallpox vaccine is not recommended as a preventive strategy for monkeypox, in line with international recommendations and the global response thus far,” he wrote.
“Although the smallpox vaccine is up to 85 per cent effective at preventing monkeypox, it has potentially severe side effects.
“For the general population, the risks of complications outweigh the benefits, because they are at low risk of being infected.
“Exercising personal responsibility to avoid high-risk activities, especially when symptomatic, and practising good personal hygiene remain effective at reducing the risk of transmission in the general population.”
According to MOH, the transmission of the disease occurs when a person comes into close contact with the monkeypox virus through an infected animal, infected person or contaminated environment.
“Animal-to-human transmission may occur by a bite or scratch from an infected animal, bush meat preparation, or direct contact with the blood, body fluids, or skin or mucosal lesions of infected animals,” the ministry says on its website.
“Human-to-human transmission can occur via exposure to respiratory droplets or direct physical contact with the blood, body fluid or lesion material from (an) infected individual or contaminated material.”
Whatever it is, monkeys are not welcome in my home.
New Book!
