During this period, I could tell my husband wasn’t thinking coherently. In other areas of his life, he was able to function properly, but when it came to this scam, he believed that giving money was the only way.
It might have started out as a bit of greed on his part, but I think it got to the point where he feared losing more money if he didn’t make the transfers quickly.
It was only in January 2019, five months after he first started transferring money, when he woke up and smelt the coffee. We’d gone to see the police for a follow-up interview, and the policeman told him sternly that he could transfer money all he wanted, but he wouldn’t get back a cent.
By this time, he’d transferred S$1.2 million in total. He owed his boss S$130,000, and the bank S$150,000. He also owed the credit card companies more than S$80,000.
PICKING UP THE PIECES
We had to pay off all our debts.
I treated it as a challenge. I broke down the money we owed people into smaller amounts and paid them in instalments. Each time we made a payment, I marked it down, and it’d give me a sense of achievement.
