For most of us, homes are where we feel the safest. It’s where we house our valuables and get a good night’s sleep.
However, a 22-year-old woman got apprehended recently, along with her boyfriend and his twin brother, for faking a burglary at her own home.
In this mini heist, Tiffany Tan Hwee Shuan made off with $57,000 worth of cash and items. A sum of $14,000 was even used as part of her birthday celebrations.
On Tuesday (13 April), 3 of them were admitted to committing an act of theft with common intention. They will be sentenced on 19 May.
According to TODAY Online, Ms Tan hatched a plan with her boyfriend to steal from her family home in Bukit Batok.
On 11 July 2020, when her brother and father were out of the house, Ms Tan decided to act on her plans to steal from her own family.
Together with her boyfriend Oh Jia Kai, they brought her mother out for supper. However, after getting into a BMW that she had rented the previous day, she lied that she left her mobile home at home.
Hence, she left her mother and boyfriend to retrieve it at home, and nobody was around at the time.
The initial plan was to rob her brother’s safe, which housed a $11,800 Rolex watch, 2 gold rings, and cash.
However, after scouting the home, she discovered $34,000 in her father’s bag.
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Therefore, she decided to rob both her brother and father of their valuables.
The court heard that Ms Tan had rented a BMW and a Suzuki car a day prior to the ‘burglary’.
The Suzuki was used by Oh Jia Cheng, the boyfriend’s twin brother, to transport the stolen goods from Ms Tan’s home.
After looting her own family, she passed the stolen goods to Jia Cheng who was waiting nearby.
She then rejoined her mother and boyfriend in the car and went forth with supper.
The next morning, her boyfriend and a co-accused Vincent Koo Bing Jie brought the safe to a car workshop at Toh Guan Road to have it unlocked.
The items were transported to a self-storage facility afterwards.
The $34,000 worth of cash stolen from Ms Tan’s father were passed to a friend for safekeeping.
Ms Tan’s boyfriend told his friend Wong Kin Pong that his girlfriend’s brother had won the money from illegal betting. Hence, he said it wasn’t safe for the money to be kept in her family’s home due to police investigations.
Mr Wong thus obliged. A few days later, the court heard that Mr Oh went back to retrieve $14,000, which was used to spend on Ms Tan’s birthday festivities.
TODAY Online reports that he gave her $950, a party at a bar worth $2,800, and a $3,150 Louis Vuitton bag with $7,100 inside of it.
Source
After discovering that their valuables had been stolen, Ms Tan’s brother called the police.
In her scheme to make it look like a robbery, she told her family that $3,000 had been stolen from her bag as well, making her look like a victim instead of the perpetrator.
Unfortunately for the trio, twin brother Jia Cheng was caught on CCTV walking out of the lift lobby of the housing unit carrying 2 bulky bags on 11 July — the day of the theft.
He was subsequently arrested on 21 Jul after police tracked his details provided by Grab.
Although he initially denied involvement in the burglary by claiming he wasn’t close to Jia Kai and his girlfriend, he eventually admitted to the truth.
Ms Tan and her boyfriend were arrested thereafter. The trio will be sentenced on May 19.
While owning luxury items and having tons of disposable cash is an ideal life many seek to have, attaining the status through illegal means isn’t the way to go about it.
We hope the family finds closure from this incident, and perhaps find a way to reconcile with one another.
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Featured image adapted from Fifth Person and Twitter.
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