3 and a half years' jail for man who printed fake currency notes

Elena Chong
My Paper
Friday, Nov 25, 2016

Broke and indebted to loan sharks, Sasi Kumar Lakshmanan decided to print fake currency notes for use.

Yesterday, the 29-year-old was jailed for 31/2 years for using a fake $100 currency note to pay for cigarettes. He had also created a counterfeit $50 note.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang said Sasi Kumar decided to print some counterfeit currency notes as he was in financial difficulty and owed loan sharks more than $5,000.

On July 11, he took a $100 note and placed it on a printer.

He realised the colour of the photocopied $100 note was almost the same as the genuine one. To make it more accurate, he adjusted the colour of the photocopied $100 note.

After five or six tries, he finally managed to produce a photocopied $100 note that closely resembled a genuine one.

He then printed another four copies of the note and cut them to the right size.

The next day, he produced one of the fake $100 notes at Foodpark coffee shop at Block 2, Lorong Lew Lian, to pay for two packets of cigarettes totalling $21.80.

He pocketed the $78.20 in change.

The fake note was discovered by a stall supervisor, who made a police report on July 13.

Police raided Sasi Kumar's home in Lorong Lew Lian and found, among other things, a counterfeit $50 note.

In his written mitigation plea, Sasi Kumar said his wife was due to deliver their third child soon. He said he suffers from epileptic fits and had just found a job doing deliveries for a friend.

Two other charges of using a fake $100 note and having instruments for making them were taken into consideration.

He could have been jailed for up to 20 years and fined on each charge.