Ex-tour guide Yang Yin changes his mind about pleading guilty
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Former tour guide Yang Yin, 42, has changed his mind about pleading guilty to two charges of criminal breach of trust for misappropriating $1.1 million from a wealthy elderly widow.
At the resumption of the hearing into the charges at the State Courts on Wednesday (27 July), The Straits Times reported Yang’s lawyer Irving Choh as saying, “He has changed his mind.“
According to the report, Yang told the court through a Mandarin interpreter, "Yes I confirm what my counsel has said, because we have many (pieces of) evidence that we have yet to show.”
At the previous hearing on 8 July, Choh told the court that Yang, a China-born permanent resident, had decided to plead guilty to the charges.
Yang is alleged to have misappropriated $500,000 and $600,000 on separate occasions from Chung Khin Chun, a Singaporean. He claimed that the money was used to buy paintings for Chung, now 89.
On 31 May, Yang pleaded guilty to 120 charges involving falsification, immigration and cheating-related offences. Another 227 charges will be taken into consideration when Yang is sentenced after the current trial.
In 2006, Yang was a tour guide based in China when he met Chung, then 79, at a travel fair in Singapore. He later began living with her in Singapore in 2009, almost two years after Chung’s husband passed away. In 2011, Yang’s wife and two children also moved in to live with Chung after he obtained his PR.
Chung listed her bungalow to be given to Yang in a will made in 2010, and granted him the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) to make decisions on her welfare and assets in 2012.
In 2014, Hedy Mok, a niece of Chung, took legal actions against Yang after Chung was diagnosed with dementia. Yang’s LPA was revoked and Chung made a new will.
Yang was arrested and charged in September 2014, and has been remanded since October that year after he was denied bail.
On Wednesday, Choh told the court that Chung and Yang agreed not to let anyone find out about the money that she had passed to him to avoid “jealousy and gossip”, said the Straits Times report.
But Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jane Lim Miaoqing, who was the prosecution’s final witness, disagreed with Choh’s statement and that the money was a gift to Yang, according to the report. DSP Lim, from the Commercial Affairs Department, had said that Yang lied during recorded interviews in October 2014.
The hearing will continue on 2 August, when Yang is expected to take the stand.
