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Ex-tour guide Yang Yin pleads guilty to 120 charges

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(Photo: Facebook)

The former tour guide at the heart of the case involving a wealthy elderly widow’s assets on Tuesday (31 May) pleaded guilty to 120 charges involving falsification, immigration and cheating-related offences.

Another 227 charges will be taken into consideration when Yang Yin, 42, is sentenced on 11 July.

The China-born permanent resident had indicated his intention to plead guilty on Monday, but the trial was adjourned after his lawyer took issue with one sentence in the court documents.

Yang also faces a separate trial involving two counts of criminal breach of trust for allegedly misappropriating $1.1 million from Chung Khin Chun, a Singaporean.

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.

The majority of the 120 charges that Yang pleaded guilty to were for falsification of receipts made to his company, Young Music and Dance Studio.

According to court documents, Yang planned to create the appearance that his company was profitable and that his income was sufficient to support his application for an employment pass and subsequently, permanent residency in Singapore.

In his application for PR, Yang had submitted payslips stating that he was drawing a salary of $7,000 a month as the managing director of his company, and submitted false figures for its turnover. However, his company had no real business and the transactions that he recorded, including for piano tuition and singing classes, did not exist.

The Immigrations and Checkpoints Authority of Singapore (ICA), which handles PR applications, confirmed that Yang would not have been granted PR if it had known his statements to be false, the documents showed.

Chung, now 89, 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 Yang’s LPA was revoked and Chung made a new will.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. He faces up to 10 years in jail, a fine, or both, on each falsification charge.