Jail for trio who were part of group that stored nearly 58,000 vape products in Lentor, Sembawang

SINGAPORE - Three men who admitted being part of a syndicate that stored nearly 58,000 vape products in two “warehouses” were each sentenced to jail on Oct 1.

Ng Tai Lun, 27, and Adrian Chia Hong Qing, 33, had acted as “local distributors” and were in the middle rung of the three-tiered syndicate.

Chia, who earned around $100,000 when he was a syndicate member, was sentenced to a year and five months’ jail, and a fine of $100,000.

He will have to spend an additional four months behind bars if he fails to pay the fine.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to one count each of being a member of the syndicate and engaging in a conspiracy to possess more than 12,000 vaporisers at one of the “warehouses” - a rented terraced house in Lentor.

Ng had earned about $40,000 while he was part of the syndicate, and he was also sentenced to a year and five months’ jail on Oct 1.

He was fined $97,600, and will be spending another four months, three weeks and two days behind bars should he fail to pay it.

He had pleaded guilty to one count each of being a member of the syndicate and engaging in a conspiracy to possess over 12,000 vaporisers at the Lentor “warehouse”.

Ng had also admitted to two other unrelated offences - one count each of drink driving and causing a van to remain at rest on a road, endangering other motorists.

For drink driving, he was also disqualified from holding or obtaining all classes of driving licences for three years and four months.

The third man, Tan Yi Tan, 36, was an “area distributor”, occupying the lowest rung in the syndicate.

Tan, who earned around $38,400 while working for the group, was sentenced to 10 months’ jail and a fine of $38,400.

Should he fail to pay the fine, he will have to spend an additional six weeks in jail.

He had pleaded guilty to one count each of being a member of the syndicate, and being in possession of vape-related products for sale.

The trio were among six people who were convicted in September for being part of the criminal group.

The other three are: Wong Ee Wei, 29, Tiffany Lim Hui Peng, 30, and Kenneth Tan Hong Chang, 31.

Lim is Kenneth Tan’s wife and the trio’s cases are pending.

Wong and Kenneth Tan had admitted they were leaders in the group.

They took instructions from a person known only as “Nobody”, purportedly based in Malaysia.

The leaders managed the “warehouses” - the Lentor one and a condominium in the Canberra area in Sembawang.

They also coordinated the deliveries of vape products from Malaysia as arranged by “Nobody”.

Lim, like Ng and Chia, was a “local distributor”.

Those on this middle rung earned up to $8,000 monthly, and met “area distributors” to assign them the orders for the day and collect earnings.

The court heard that the group delivered up to 210 orders of vaporisers and components daily.

A seventh offender, Roy Tan Jun Jie, 34, was sentenced to 10 months’ jail and fined $45,000 on Aug 19.

In an unrelated case, the court heard that Ng had consumed up to eight small glasses of beer at a Telok Ayer Street pub on June 5, before driving home to Jurong in a van.

He was at a signalised traffic junction between Lorong 5 and Lorong 4 Toa Payoh before 2.30am when he nodded off while waiting for the lights to change in his favour.

The van remained stationary, and he did not respond even when another motorist sounded the horn.

A police officer found him reeking of alcohol.

He had 80 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath. This was more than double the prescribed limit of 35 micrograms of alcohol in the same amount of breath.