A 21-year-old student used his expertness to swop a Rolex watch, which costs around $30,000 with a duplicate watch that values a $500 but failed to complete the theft and as a result police arrested him.
On the day of the hearing, the court came to know that the accused Jim Bradley Misso Wen Ping, who is pursuing a degree at Kaplan, along with his friend made a plan to trick property agent the 29-year-old Thomas Tong Guo Xian, who was trying sell the watch online as he wanted to buy a house to shift with his fiancee.
To sell the watch, which was worth $29,500, Tong put it up for sale on the Carousell, which is a famous consumer to consumer online marketplace for buying and selling new and second-hand goods.
Misso's friend Joshua Chua Yong Cheng first spotted the advertisement online on November 30, 2017. As reported, on January 13, 2018, the 24-year-old Chua went to Tong's home but when he realised that he cannot afford that watch, as it is too expensive, he told Misso about it and planned to seal it.
The court also heard that, at the beginning of their plan, first Chua bought a fake watch on Carousell for about $500 and gave it to his alleged crime partner Misso, who later fixed an appointment with Tong on January 22. The meeting was scheduled at the void deck of Block 3D Upper Boon Keng Road.
On the same day, Chua also contacted the agent and told him that he wanted to buy that Rolex watch. Tong agreed to meet Chua for dinner and sent his 30-year-old fiancée, Nicole Chan Hui Shan to meet Misso. But, the couple had no idea about the connection between Misso and Chua.
When Chan met Misso, she gave him the watch to take a look and inspect it properly before making the payment. The 21-year-old student then pretended to check the watch and somehow managed to guard it from Chan's vision and swopped it with the fake watch perfectly.
Later, Misso gave her the fake watch back and put the original watch in a paper bag and gave it to a friend Alissa Tay Su Ying, 24, for safekeeping. But when Tong returned home for dinner and found the colour and the serial number of the watch is different from the real watch, he filed a police report against Misso.
Later, police arrested Misso and Chua from Tuas Checkpoint on January 30. The officers recovered the real Rolex watch from Tay's home.
During the court hearing that took place on Wednesday, Misso was also found guilty of voluntarily causing hurt in a separate incident that happened on August 19, 2017. The court came to know that the student punched 19-year-old Kingston Tan Jing Rong outside Zouk nightclub in Clarke Quay after a row that injured the victim.
On the day of the court hearing, the District Judge Eddy Tham said that even though Misso is not the main mastermind of this watch stealing case, he played a major role, as he swops those two watches. However, Chua has yet to be dealt with by the court.
As per the law, Misso could face a jail term for up to seven years and fine for criminal breach of trust and for the other case of voluntarily causing hurt, he could have been sentenced to two years of imprisonment with a fine of $5,000.
