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Singapore has jailed six Malaysian men for robbing a high-stakes poker game at an upscale residence two years ago.
The men entered the King Albert Park bungalow in the affluent Bukit Timah area shortly after 2am local time on 18 April 2024. Some of them were armed with machetes and baseball bats.
Inside were 11 people, including several poker players.
The robbers restrained the people with tape and cable ties before taking their phones and valuables. They searched the devices for cryptocurrency apps and transferred assets from one victim’s account.
They took about $3.9m (£2.9m) in cash, cryptocurrency, and luxury watches in what the court that sentenced them described as a “lightning heist”. They also went away with the keys to a Ferrari.
The men pleaded guilty on Monday to charges including armed gang robbery and removing criminal proceeds from Singapore. They received prison sentences ranging from seven years and eight months to 12 years and 11 months, with those under 50 also ordered to receive 24 strokes of the cane each.
The men were identified as Wong Chi Shan, 35; Goh Boon Tong, 30; Mohd Hamidon Ahmed, 49; Kartik Palaniappan, 34; Mohd Hashim Ismail, 51; and Muhammad Tauffiq Ahmad Fauzi, 34.
They had planned the robbery for weeks, the court heard. Wong and Goh had learned about the private poker games and visited the house before deciding to target it.
Goh subsequently recruited Hamidon, who arranged for additional men to take part.
A seventh suspect, Malaysian Muhammad Yusuf Kassim, 33, remains at large. He is believed to have fled Malaysia for Thailand, according to court documents.
After the robbery, the men fled Singapore via separate border crossings and regrouped in Malaysia. They discarded their clothes and weapons along the way.
In Malaysia, they converted some of the stolen cryptocurrency into cash and distributed it among themselves.
The men were eventually arrested between April 2024 and November 2024 and brought back to Singapore to face prosecution.
Singaporean authorities recovered S$1.69m (£985,000) of the stolen property but more than S$3.2m (£1.87m) remained unrecovered. Goh also assisted investigators in recovering about $800,000 (about £593,000) worth of cryptocurrency.
The court documents revealed that Hamidon was paid to recruit men for the robbery. He received 10,000 ringgit (£1,820) upfront.
Wong and Goh planned for the robbers to wear black clothes, gloves and ski masks.
The 11 people who were inside the house at the time of the robbery were identified as the Chinese hostess of the game Li Xiaoyu, her husband Li Yang, an organiser of poker games called Hu Zhi Peng, a South Korean woman working as the card dealer, a Malaysian masseur, and seven poker players from Indonesia, China and Singapore.
When the robbers entered the house, they first confronted one victim as he came out of the toilet, threatening him with a machete before taping his mouth, wrists and ankles and forcing him to stay inside.
They then entered the living room, ordered everyone to raise their hands and lower their heads, and collected their phones.
At the sentencing, Justice Aidan Xu said this was an “audacious and well-planned” armed gang robbery “which has disrupted the peace and security”.
“We expect our homes to be secure,” he said, “those who disturb that peace and security can only expect to be treated severely.”