• Aizil A Rahim, 28, was sentenced to 16 months and eight weeks’ jail for criminal breach of trust and giving false information to a public servant
When he failed to deliver the cards and his customers grew increasingly suspicious, Aizil made a police report and lied that a Japanese man named “Nagashima” had defrauded him of S$30,000.On Thursday , Aizil, 28, was sentenced to 16 months and eight weeks’ jail, or about 1.5 years’ jail. Early last year, he started getting addicted to collecting watches and expensive football trading cards, spending nearly S$40,000 on both hobbies.Needing a “steady source of income” to fund his expenses, he decided to advertise pre-orders for Pokemon and One Piece trading cards that were yet to be released. He priced the pre-orders for Pokemon 151 cards at S$1,700 to S$1,860 for one case of cards.Customers would pre-order these cards from him and transfer the money to him.
When the initial group of customers who pre-ordered started to chase Aizil for the trading cards, he would make up several excuses. These included the cards being detained by Singapore Customs, that he had been hospitalised and that his supplier failed to ship the cards to him. Aizil claimed that he had paid Nagashima S$30,000 for Pokemon cards, but Nagashima later made several excuses for why he had not delivered the cards or provided shipment tracking details.
The reason why Aizil filed his online police report was to show his customers that he was not a scammer and for use as evidence for his customers in the event that they go to his house to demand for the promised cards, DPP Tay added.