In this week’s Scam Case Series, we will be sharing a case involving a twenty two thousand dollar scam. Our client was then working as a Grabcar and Uber driver while the debtor was working as a sales associate with a car rental company. They have both since switched careers to other industries.

Our client first got to know the debtor when he tried to rent a car with the company that the debtor is working for. He was looking to enter the Uber and Grabcar industry, and was introduced to the debtor.
But the relation between our client and debtor was far from healthy. For example, the debtor has taken advantage of our client’s good nature to encourage him to rent higher end cars (like the mid-size to large continental cars) for work. They continue to maintain contact during maintenance cycles and various switches in cars along the way. Through this, the debtor was also able better understand our client, especially in terms of his knowledge of his aspirations and financial situation (which was not exactly in good state).

The debtor has also manipulated our client’s good nature in other ways. For example, he got our client to be his private chauffeur whenever he had to go overseas – sometimes even making our client wake up before dawn to fetch him. But that’s not all. On one occasion, he ‘convinced’ our client to leave the car with him so that he can drive to the airport, and that he will park the car in the airport carpark for our client to collect. This does not make any sense, considering that the car was our client’s work vehicle! Not to mention that the debtor did not even bother to pay for petrol or the carpark. From our client’s point of view, he always saw the debtor as a good friend – even sponsoring an air ticket for debtor, and signing a Singtel handphone line for him.

Eventually, the debtor quit his job with the car rental company and approached our client saying he has a lot of contacts from China, and can ship some goods (home accessories) to sell locally and “earn money together”. Knowing that our client has an easy-going outlook on life, sometimes to his personal detriment, the debtor deliberately got our client to put his entire life savings of twenty two thousand dollars in his “business venture” while promising him that he would be a shareholder.

The debtor even photocopied his IC to show his residential address as a form of goodwill assurance for our client, and inspire greater confidence in their business venture. Except that it was not his real address. Needless to say, the investment failed to materialize. When our client asked for some updates on the state of the venture, the client would deflect these questions by saying the “cargo side” has some difficulty passing China’s custom.

He sent our client some photos of the goods to show that everything is in order. It was only 2 months later that he told our client that the goods have “arrived” but that they cannot be sold, and so our client would not be able to get his money back.

Finding difficulty in getting the debtor to pay up, our client decided to engage us for some professional advice. KX-Unit did an in-depth analysis on the case dynamics and came to a few conclusions. First, if the debtor/scammer truly used the money to get the goods (which he claimed is not sellable), he should be able to at least provide our clients with them and allow our client to find other means to sell them off. If he were unable to do that, and without any good supporting reasons, it would strongly suggest that the debtor had scammed our client.

Even though KX-Unit did not take up the case eventually due to our client’s already piling financial constraints, we gave him some advice on some of his other options. We advised him to seek help from the relevant agencies and government legal authorities (like Legal Aid, Commercial Affairs Department, Magistrate Court, seeking help from his constituency representatives, etc.) Suffice to say that as much as possible we tried to advise our client in terms of his current predicament and constraints.

The advice we provide would depend on a case-by-case basis. We are confident that through our hours of discussion, our client has learnt much about the dangers of trusting others. Especially for a good-natured person, one should always stand guard and remain alert to sweeping friendships and manipulations.

At the end of the day, KX-Unit still holds steadfastly to our creed of quality, transparency and integrity. We do not sugar coat an issue to mislead our clients for business, and we strive to offer our sincere advice as professionals. Ultimately, our client’s best interest is always our foremost and fiercest priority.

We hope you have managed to gain some insights from the SCS article, and would like to extend our professional service to anyone who may be in need. If you are unsure of your predicament and need a professional opinion to guide you, feel free to contact KX-Unit at 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website athttp://www.KX-Unit.com

KX-Unit has been consistently sharing various scam cases – especially for construction companies – as part of our Scam Case Series (SCS). In this brief article, we highlight a few advisory pointers for our counterparts in the Renovation and Construction industry. These pointers are elicited from our KX-Consultancy database, which we have consistently been compiling for our clients who need our consultancy service on business related matters. The two pointers we are sharing today are 1) Contract Terms, and 2) Business Assessment.

1) Contract Terms
In the event of dispute, we advise our client primarily on the appropriate and available channels (through legal means) to settle the dispute, such that the issue can be resolved in a fair and efficient manner. Some of the more common manners include arbitration and mediation. Many private companies, whose role is to advance an amicable settlement on your behalf, offer these services.
It is also important to have an Agreeable Payment term, to ensure non-ambiguity and clear contractual liabilities and responsibilities. Progressive payment terms, for example, ensure a fair percentage to be paid out at various sages, or any necessary fair upfront payments so that suppliers and smaller companies have something to work with. This is especially so for smaller construction and renovation companies, who may not have the luxury of a large margin of error due to their economic constraints. For example, their companies’ cash flow system may be paralyzed by a single delay in payment from their counterpart, especially if the terms and conditions in the Agreeable Payment term are unclear. Often, the cost of labor and raw materials would have to be borne by the smaller and less resources-rich companies for a long time before they are able to receive payment. This process may be debilitating for the smaller company’s development and survival.

2) Business Assessment
Business Assessment is also something you can do before jumping into new business propositions. You can check on a company’s track record, for example, whether or not they are consistent and stable paymasters. Also, various open source information on companies’ balance sheets are useful for analysis. Some of these details on a company’s track record can be acquired through legal channels like ACRA. However, these data may not be meaningful unless they have been rigorously analyzed and corroborated with other sources. Various business consultancy firms (including KX-Unit) offer services to help our clients with their assessment. As for KX-Unit, we provide systematic information and also analysis on Anti-Scam Assessment for our clients. Till date, KX-Unit has helped more than 20 clients in their assessment on new business propositions, and in a few of them successfully helped our clients avoid a potential business mis-step.

Nonetheless, you can look out for industry veterans in your field to get more information on particular groups of people or companies. If you ask the right person, you may be able to get wind of a list of blacklisted “business” people or companies, information that you may otherwise find difficult to find online. Well, given our ‘kiasu’ culture in Singapore, it might actually make perfect (financial) sense to say that sourcing for the free option to get information might actually be your best bet after all!
Jokes aside, KX-Unit sincerely hopes that this short edition has provided crucial information for our counterparts in the renovation and construction industry. Because business propositions are no small matter, and if you consider that some information (which is not known to you then) can potentially avert a grave corporate disaster, it might actually make more business sense to seek a professional opinion.

KX-Unit warmly extends our professional services to you, our expertise and exposure to countless complex cases of debt has provided us with a critical understanding on various trends typical to a particular industry. Objective analysis on business owners and their temperaments through various sources are also part of our KX-Consultancy initiative. So, feel free to contact KX-Unit at 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website athttp://www.KX-Unit.com

This is a case that KX-Unit have taken on a few months ago. Our client, a man in his 40s, had issues recovering a debt from a friend.

About a year ago, our client has responded to a debtor’s plea for an “urgent loan”. The debtor is a female in her late 30s, and she knew our client from their previous company. Besides working in the same department, they both fostered a strong friendship over itme and frequently shares with each other about their unhappiness and grievances at home. However, their relation remained platonic.

Shortly after our client left the company, the debtor also left. They then pursued their own interests and found jobs in other sectors, and in that period of time they did not keep in contact, until last year when the debtor texted our client.
Our client was told that she needed an urgent loan of $20,000 for her family. When probed further by our client, she revealed that it was something that could break her family and her reputation. Looking at the trust and friendship they had, our client did not probe further even though the reason did not seem adequate, and transferred the money to her.

In that moment, there was an understanding that the money would be returned whenever she was able to. Our client also took into consideration the debtor’s difficult family relations when he gave the loan. Unlike the usual debtor, the she demonstrated initiative and even wrote a letter or a contract after receiving the loan to show that she has taken the money and will return it. This letter is signed by both our client and the debtor as a form of mutual assurance.

But since then, our client’s attempt to recover the loan has been largely unsuccessful. Not because the debtor is unwilling to pay or that she is evasive (although this may be a contributing factor), but rather the fact that our client does not want to “overly stress” or cause her undue duress.

The most that he has gone in terms of trying to recover the debt was when he texted her again a few months later to ask if she is able to repay the debt soon. She replied that she was still “struggling” and would need at least 2 more months.
Hearing this, our client decided to wait another two more months before approaching her. This time they met up at a café and even though our client needed to recover his money from her, the conversation and the dynamics of their friendship proved challenging.
It was at this point that our client approached us. For us at KX-Unit, we followed up with this case of personal debt professionally. We know the challenges of our client and we know the sensitivities of the debtor’s family.
What was unique in this case was that it is not yet clear that the debtor is unwilling to pay, it was just that the dynamics between our client and the debtor makes it difficult for him to recover the debt by himself.

The staffs at KX-Unit sat with our client and we identified some of the more consistent characteristics of the debtor, we also got our client’s opinion on the various sensitivities that were needed in approaching the debtor. In general, we acted in a low-profile manner on behalf of our client as a simple issue like providing a loan to a lady might be blown to proportion by either sides of the family.

KX-Unit started by using emails to reach the debtor. She responded rather swiftly and eventually decided to text the number that we provided her. We had our negotiation mostly online, both as a way for us to still keep track and hold her accountable to her words. This approach was unique because most conventional debt recovery negotiation involves mostly face to face interaction.
Still, we met the debtor a few times, mainly to hand her the Letter of Demand and various other contractual agreements. On behalf of our client, we were able to tease out the various complicating factors which made the debtor less forthcoming in repayment, and also better understand her motivations in taking the loan in the first place.

In fact, we were able to provide our client with an assurance that his loan has helped the debtor quite “significantly” in her trying period. And her commitment to a reasonable installment plan for repayment through KX-Unit has been effective thus far.
While this case may not be highly complex, it does require a certain level of Emotional Quotient (EQ) and sensitivity to handle. Our main interest in this case was to handle it in a delicate way, such that there would be no reason for any antagonism to arise. For example, during our meetings with the debtor we paid attention to what we wore, mostly pastel coloured shirts rather than our usual jet black. We had strategic briefings with our negotiators prior to the meeting to ensure that we have the right disposition and send the right message. Being versatile and flexible is one of our strong suit, and we remain commited to a quality service to serve our client’s best interest.

The dynamism of human relations require a dynamic and versatile approach. And for KX-Unit, we demonstrate our quality by customising our recovery approach to something that our client would be comfortable with. But that said it depends on the viability of the approach. It is in cases like this that we remind ourselves of our duty to uphold a principle that a debt needs to be paid, and also that goodwill shall be reciprocated accordingly, and vice versa.

Some of us may be in a situation similar to the case above, and if you do need any advice on the way forward, KX-Unit is willing to help. Besides the rigorous selection of socially aware and skilled staffs, and we adopt a customized approach (like the one above) to help our client achieve their desired goals, in a firm but sensitive manner. If you need any professional advice, or if you have friends who does, you can make enquires by heading to our website http://www.KX-Unit.com/ or email us at enquires@KX-Unit.com or call us @ h/p: +65 8112 7790 and we will be most willing to assist.

The case we are sharing this week is a Claims and Dispute Management case, as referenced in our previous Debtor’s Spotlight post. The debtor (Mr X) is the person of focus, arguably also the owner of a construction company.
He owes our client, who is the sub-contractor, forty thousand dollars as the final installment. Our client has exhausted all options in recovering the debt but to no avail, as Mr X, the debtor, had been evasive.

Despite our client using emails, calls, messages, and even going down physically, Mr X still managed to evade. In one instance, our client successfully caught up with him. Knowing he had no place to run, he told our client calmly that he needs to use the toilet first and after that he will write our client a cheque to “pay off” the debt.

But no, he slipped away via an emergency staircase landing. And naturally our client did not anticipate that. The next time our client saw him, he literally jumped up and ran away. That said, here we are not dealing with just an evasive debtor.

Mr X was also a very shrewd and cunning businessman. For example, his businesses are registered under the name of a young female Chinese national, as a sole proprietorship. This was an industry anomaly because the type of money involved in construction projects simply made sole proprietorship a dangerous liability. And a sensible businessperson would not do this, allowing us to extrapolate that the Chinese national was just a person through which Mr X maintained his business. Of course there is a real possibility that this is the truth, but corroborated this with the other factors and the evidence seem to say otherwise.
For example, Mr X has two businesses, one for receiving contracts and the other for giving payments, which is also suspicious. After all, why would he need two business entities for the same business contract? Plus the business acumen, resources, and monitoring capabilities for a business that scale is going to be quite daunting too.

Upon engaging KX-Unit, we got up to speed quickly with our client’s information and description. We brought all the information to our strategy boards – including facts, verifications, invoices, construction work schedules, and even the floor plans, etc. – just in case.

If the debtor can run away from you, in front of you, there is every reason to believe he will attempt to dispute the very evidence presented to him. And that was the mindset that the staffs at KX-Unit had adopted. By the third day of our preliminary engagement, the strategy board in our office was almost filled. Not just with facts and contracts for our negotiations, but also with our strategies – from plan A to D. We have verified our information and we were ready for the negotiation.

We engaged him by trying to seek dialogue with him, and when he was not available we turned to the private estate that was rented under the Chinese national’s name and that led us to his other worker and finally to Mr X himself. And when we finally spoke to him, he denied everything. Even saying that he was a “victim” because his client did not pay him, something we later found to be untrue from the fourth party (our debtor’s client), and we kept evidence of that statement via our body camera.
During our most recent conversation, when he realized his pity cards were simply not going to work, he said: “if not happy, come sue me”. And he did so with his workers standing behind him, almost as a subtle threat to us there and then.

But the staffs at KX-Unit know what we need to do. We had to be firm and remain professional. After all, our minds are always on our client’s best interest, and we were not going to jeopardise that. We train our people – our assets – to rise above these taunts.
Your interest is our top priority at KX-Unit. If you do require a professional opinion on your own situation, or if you do know someone that may have such a need, feel free to contact KX-Unit at +65 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com if you have any queries on this case or our services, and we will be most willing to advise. Alternatively, you may visit our website at http://www.KX-Unit.com/.