Man who pocketed $12,000 from insurance clients gets over 3 months' jail
Shaffiq Alkhatib
The Straits Times
March 2, 2026
A financial consultant at an insurance firm misappropriated more than $12,000 in total from two clients, who gave him the money for their policies' premiums.
Over 11 years, from 2013 to 2024, he pocketed more than $7,500 from one of the victims, identified in court documents as V1. He also took $4,800 from the second victim, V2, in 2015 and 2017.
Zheng Hongwei, 40, who has made full restitution to the victims, was sentenced to three months and a week in jail on March 2.
Zheng, who was a consultant at Great Eastern Life Assurance Company at the time of the offences, pleaded guilty to four counts of criminal breach of trust and one count of forgery.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Kamen Chiang told the court that in 2013, Zheng was introduced to V1 to sell health insurance to her.
She signed up for two plans. The premiums for one of the plans were paid directly from her Central Provident Fund account.
For the second plan, she gave Zheng the money for the premiums to be paid to the insurance firm.
She made 12 payments totalling more than $7,500 to him between 2013 and 2024.
In reality, this second plan was never activated, and he pocketed the money.
This came to light in 2024, when V1 asked whether a medical procedure was covered under her policy.
"(Zheng) confirmed it was. Relying on this representation, V1 underwent the procedure," the DPP said.
However, the insurance firm later rejected her claims for the procedure.
Details about the medical procedure and how much it cost were not disclosed in court documents.
V1's son confronted Zheng, who confessed to pocketing the money and acknowledged the second plan was not in place.
The offender also accepted responsibility for the non-coverage of V1's medical procedure.
During this meeting, Zheng falsely claimed the plan had been in effect until 2020.
The following month, he produced and showed V1 a forged document purporting to show he had collected and paid the plan's premiums to the firm between 2013 and 2019, DPP Chiang said.
However, the firm had earlier told V1 that no premium payments were ever made for the second plan. Faced with this contradiction, Zheng finally came clean about what he did.
In a separate case, V2 in 2013 bought through Zheng a policy with an annual premium of $2,400.
Between 2013 and 2017, V2 paid him directly to remit premiums to the insurance firm.
But in 2015 and 2017, Zheng misappropriated the victim's payments totalling $4,800.
He was finally charged in court in 2025.
On March 2, Zheng's bail was set at $15,000, and he is expected to start serving his jail sentence on March 9.
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