An elaborate heist involving four Indian nationals managed to swipe over $1 million from a lodging house in Little India back in 2012, and as of last Friday, they were convicted of gang robbery.
Two of them — 36-year-old Magesan Ramasamy and 32-year-old Mohamed Faizal Ajmalhan — donned police uniforms and forced their way into the rooms of three Indian businessmen along Dunlop Street before restraining their victims with flexi-cuffs and taking off with $1.27 million as part of a phony police raid.
Two other men — construction workers Arunachalam Lakshmanan and Chinnaya Antony Samy — kept a look-out on the street. They were the ones who fed the rest of their gang with information about the victims, who they believed were involved in illegal money remittance, The Straits Times reports.
A fifth member of the group, Mohammad Ansari Abdul Hussain, was a police reservist and provided the police uniforms. He had also posed as a police officer and was sentenced to eight years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane in 2013 after pleading guilty to gang robbery and impersonating a public servant.
In addition to gang robbery, both Magesan and Faizal were found guilty of posing as police officers. In court, their lawyers argued that they did not commit robbery, but instead carried out cheating by impersonation as the victims had allowed them to take their money because they thought they were policemen.
Both Arunachalam and Chinnaya had provided information about the victims as they thought that Magesan and Faizal were real police officers.
All four Indian nationals will be sentenced on June 16.
Photo: DAVID HOLT via Flickr
An elaborate heist involving four Indian nationals managed to swipe over $1 million from a lodging house in Little India back in 2012, and as of last Friday, they were convicted of gang robbery.
Two of them — 36-year-old Magesan Ramasamy and 32-year-old Mohamed Faizal Ajmalhan — donned police uniforms and forced their way into the rooms of three Indian businessmen along Dunlop Street before restraining their victims with flexi-cuffs and taking off with $1.27 million as part of a phony police raid.
Two other men — construction workers Arunachalam Lakshmanan and Chinnaya Antony Samy — kept a look-out on the street. They were the ones who fed the rest of their gang with information about the victims, who they believed were involved in illegal money remittance, The Straits Times reports.
A fifth member of the group, Mohammad Ansari Abdul Hussain, was a police reservist and provided the police uniforms. He had also posed as a police officer and was sentenced to eight years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane in 2013 after pleading guilty to gang robbery and impersonating a public servant.
In addition to gang robbery, both Magesan and Faizal were found guilty of posing as police officers. In court, their lawyers argued that they did not commit robbery, but instead carried out cheating by impersonation as the victims had allowed them to take their money because they thought they were policemen.
Both Arunachalam and Chinnaya had provided information about the victims as they thought that Magesan and Faizal were real police officers.
All four Indian nationals will be sentenced on June 16.
Photo: DAVID HOLT via Flickr