Siew Im Cheah, 59, pretended she was the granddaughter of Singapore’s first prime minister and a close friend of forever President Obama before asking a Washington Redskins player, his agent, and her other alleged victims to invest in her various business ventures.
Cheah was sentenced to 51 months in prison for stealing the identity of her former roommate and using it to scam the unidentified Redskin player, his agent, and the other victims. She pleaded guilty in the identity fraud case after being arrested in 2017, according to Fox News. In a press release, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va., said Cheah entered the U.S. 18 years ago using the identity of a 66-year-old Malaysian woman named Sau Hoon Lee.
A prosecutor described Cheah as a ‘one-woman crime spree’ before her sentencing in a Virginia court earlier this month. The Malaysian-born woman stole ‘at least six identities and several fortunes,’ according to The Washington Post, and scammed others, including a wealthy executive, a trainer, and an appointee for the Virginia governor.
Cheah met the Redskins player and his agent at a Porsche dealership in 2015, where she told the men that her name was Cindy Lin and that she was prepared to buy a majority share in the Washington Wizards NBA team. The pair contributed over $1.2 million into the venture, and have yet to receive their money back.
In a pre-sentencing letter to the judge, the agent stated he and his client knew Cheah as Cindy Lin and invested $1.2 million in a company for the purchase of the NBA’s Washington Wizards in 2015. “We later got suspicious of her because of her lavish lifestyle, multiple high-end sports cars, and inconsistencies in her stories,” the agent said. He described her as “very manipulative” and lacking remorse “for the heartaches she has caused us.”
