A 58-year-old woman is awaiting prison after receiving over half a billion dollars in mysterious and unexplained funds in her bank account.
Authorities say Zin Nwe Nyunt of Singapore set up a wholesale trading firm, and after the company’s accounts received SGD $640.7 million – about $500 million – she stated she had no idea where it came from, The Straits Times reports.
-->Her trading firm, called Unione Pte Ltd, set up bank accounts with Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), United Overseas Bank (UOB) and DBS.
She then received large sums of money via wire transfer between 2020 and 2021, court proceedings show.
Nyunt first hit the police’s radar when an Australian investment scam victim provided information that led investigators to Unione’s bank account in 2021, which received $1.8 million in proceeds from the scheme.
Court proceedings revealed a friend of Nyunt’s husband, Nyan Win, was approached by a Myanmar national named Ko Phillip, who asked him if he wanted to assist him in his commodities trading business by receiving wire transfers to a Singaporean business account.
The deal was that Win would be paid 0.5 Myanmar kyat – a small fraction of a cent – for every US$1 received.
However, Win decided it was too risky for him to receive money to his company’s bank account, and instead referred the alleged “opportunity” to Nyunt’s husband.
In what appears to be an elaborate money laundering operation for scams, neither Nyunt nor Nyan were ever aware of the source of the funds, but each admitted to receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in “commissions.”
Nyunt will begin serving an 18 month prison sentence in August while Nyan is expected to be sentenced at the end of this month.
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