A woman with a history of false marriage promises to trick men into deceiving their money returned to her whims by posting photos on the matchmaking platform to attract more victims.
Using photos of her relatives, Mariha Lam tricked a 29-year-old Indian citizen living in Singapore into believing she would marry him, spending $ 5,750 on him and his father during the year. I was fooled.
Her suitor caught up with the trick when she found a photo on Facebook that looked like a 25-year-old woman, Maliha, 51.
On Tuesday (June 14th), she was imprisoned for seven months after pleading guilty to cheating.
The court heard that Mariha, who lived in Singapore and was self-employed at the time, created a fake profile “Keerthana” on the matchmaking platform Tamil Matrimony.
Her profile included a contact number.
When her suitor’s 62-year-old father contacted her in November 2018 hoping to find her son’s partner, Mariha asked him to call a landline to talk to her “mother.” Told.
It was part of her ploy that made her think she was really looking for a partner.
Mariha actually lives alone and her mother died in 2002, said Deputy Prosecutor Seah EeWei.
When the older man called, Mariha pretended to be Keeltana’s mother and gave her approval to allow her son to contact Keeltana during the conversation.
The suitor, who was 29 at the time, then began talking to Mariha on the phone. She told him she was working as a counselor at an Australian army base.
When he requested to chat on a video call, she said she was not allowed to use a camera phone for the place where she was allegedly working.
Mariha sent him a photo claiming that they belonged to her. In fact, they were pictures of young relatives working in the army.
To win his confidence, she also sent suitors gifts like headphones and medicines for his father.
Mariha, who has been in Singapore for a long time, made him believe that he would get married if he returned from Australia in May 2019.
However, she continued to change her return date over the next few months, claiming she had a new job abroad. At some point, she said she needed money to help her client as a counselor, and she turned to him for help.
He sent her a total of $ 4,750 four times from December 2018 to October 2019, believing that the money would be for drug purchases and client funeral expenses.
Mariha also tricked a $ 1,000 male father into saying he needed money for his personal expenses. Instead, she used the money to repay interest on a loan borrowed from her friend.
Mariha promised to repay the suitor and sent him $ 2,000 from an ATM at Bukit Panjang Plaza on October 4, 2019.
This made him suspicious.
During my research, I found a Facebook account owned by a relative of Mariha and noticed a photo similar to the one sent by “Keerthana”.
The DPP states: “The victim discovered that this user was already married and posted that someone was impersonating her and fooling her people.”
He then tracked Mariha’s relatives associated with a Choa Chu Kang store owned by her family.
They confirmed that Keerthana was a fake profile and that the person in the photo was actually a relative of Maliha, said DPP Seah demanded eight to ten months’ imprisonment.
She said she was imprisoned for three years in 2007 to deceive a $ 225,000 victim after Mariha also made friends with them and promised to marry them.
A person who commits cheating will be punished by imprisonment with work for up to 10 years and a fine.
