– Spiritual leader fraud jail time
– Cult leader scam prison sentence.
Accident – Death – Obituary News :
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 20 Jun 2024
Author: Shaffiq Alkhatib
Woo May Hoe instructed her followers to carry out acts of “devotion” by purchasing properties, including houses, condos, and cars.
A self-proclaimed spiritual leader, who deceived her followers into giving her over £5 million and coerced some of them into consuming human waste as a form of punishment, was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison on June 19.
Woo May Hoe, a 54-year-old Singaporean, who declared herself as a deity and attracted approximately 30 followers, pleaded guilty in May to three counts of assault and two charges of fraud. Forty-five additional charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
According to court documents, Woo led a group that believed in the spiritual leader Sri Sakthi Narayani Amma, although no detailed information about Amma was provided in the records.
She falsely claimed that the funds collected would be directed to Amma’s organisation in India. However, instead of channelling the money for its intended purpose, Woo pocketed the funds between 2012 and 2020.
In court proceedings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Grace Chua revealed that many of Woo’s followers or their family members were grappling with severe health conditions.
Woo convinced her followers that it was imperative for them to rid themselves of their “negative karma” and accumulate “positive karma” to enhance their well-being and that of their loved ones.
She instructed them that the way to achieve this was by making financial contributions to Amma’s organisation in India.
Furthermore, she directed her followers to demonstrate their loyalty by acquiring properties such as houses, condos, and cars, which she utilised for personal gain.
About a third of her followers were instructed to live with her full-time, catering to her every need, including household chores.
DPP Chua disclosed that Woo resorted to physical abuse as a means of punishment, using objects like paint brushes and canes to strike her followers, in addition to inflicting more severe forms of harm such as “stabbing them with scissors, using pliers to extract their teeth, compelling them to ingest human waste, and coercing them to jump from a height”.
One of the individuals subjected to Woo’s abuse was a 43-year-old woman known in court documents as V2.
In a disturbing incident in 2019, Woo became enraged with V2 for an undisclosed reason and repeatedly struck her head and face with a bundle of five canes.
Following the assault, Woo instructed V2 to wash her injured eye with a concoction of “holy water” and instructed her to gaze directly at the sun.
As a result of this ordeal, V2 now requires lifelong monitoring for potential glaucoma, a condition that affects the optic nerve.
In another incident in October 2019, Woo discovered that V2 had borrowed $100 from an acquaintance without informing her. In response, she instructed V2 to jump from the second floor of a building to the first floor, resulting in fractures to both of V2’s ankles.
Subsequently, when Woo learned that V2 had visited her own mother without her knowledge between March and April 2020, she directed another follower, identified as V3, to extract three of V2’s teeth using pliers. Out of fear of facing the same fate, V3 complied with the directive.
Additionally, Woo ordered several other followers to ingest human waste as a form of punishment.
Following reports filed by some of her followers, Woo was arrested in 2020.
The prosecution revealed that Woo was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the offences, although an assessment conducted by a mental health professional from the Institute of Mental Health found no direct correlation between Woo’s mental state and her fraudulent activities.
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