April 18, 2006
HOUSING LOAN SCAM
Property firm in the dark till agent was jailed
Errant agent kept closing deals even after police started probe; too late to pull out his ads
A PROPERTY agent continued working and closing deals even after police began investigating him for his part in an elaborate scam.
In fact, ERA Singapore agent Syed Abdullah Alhamid's employer found out about his wrongdoing only after he was jailed last Thursday.
To make matters worse, his ads - asking others to join him as property agents - continued to appear in the Malay-language Berita Harian newspaper throughout the weekend.
Ads for two other property agents jailed on Thursday also appeared in Berita Harian, and its Sunday edition Berita Minggu, over the weekend.
Readers complained this gave the confusing impression that agents could still operate after they were convicted.
Syed Abdullah, 63, was jailed for a month and six other agents were jailed for one to nine months each for cheating and abetting cheating in 2003 and 2004.
They helped flat buyers get bank loans through fake employment documents. The buyers obtained more than $1 million in home loans.
But Maybank, one of the banks approached by the buyers, grew suspicious and alerted the authorities.
ERA assistant vice-president Eugene Lim said the company found out about Syed Abdullah's conviction only on Friday. It immediately suspended him.
The agency then informed Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) to pull out the ads from the Malay papers that night. SPH is also The Straits Times' publisher.
SPH's head of classified advertising, Ms Elsie Chua, said ERA had alerted it on Friday night, but those pages where the ads appeared had gone to print by then.
'However, we managed to pull out these ads for Monday,' she said.
Mr Lim said ERA would take steps to prevent such scams.
Industry experts say this exposed a lack of proper controls on property agents.
Mr Mohamed Ismail, CEO of PropNex, the biggest local property agency, acknowledged a problem: His agents were bound by contract not to engage in illegal activities but not compelled to inform the agency when they are being investigated for crimes.
One of the jailed agents, Mohammed Rusli Abdul Rahman, was with PropNex when he committed the crimes, but later joined ERA.
'This is something that we will fix,' Mr Ismail said.
But the Government should also act, he said, and require agents to be licensed. Currently, anyone can easily enter the profession, he said.
The authorities have always allowed the industry to regulate itself.
A voluntary accreditation scheme for agencies and agents was started last November.
About half of the estimated 10,000 agents here have signed up so far.
The chairman of the scheme's accreditation board, Dr Lim Lan Yuan, said one of the seven agents was accredited, and would likely be expelled.
But critics say the scheme still lacks bite as it is not compulsory. Dr Amy Khor, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development, said she would urge Parliament to make accreditation compulsory.
'There are obviously some big loopholes in the industry. But if the authorities can step in and make accreditation compulsory, it can act as a big deterrent,' she added.
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