Penny stock crash masterminds John Soh, Quah Su-Ling fail in bid to cut jail sentences

[SINGAPORE] The Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court’s sentences and dismissed applications by John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling, co-conspirators behind Singapore’s 2013 penny stock crash, to reduce their jail terms of 36 years and 20 years respectively.In meting out the longest custodial sentence for market manipulation in Singapore’s history, the High Court took into account the scale and sophistication as well as the severity of the harm caused by a scheme that wiped out almost S$8 billion in stock market value in October 2013.In December 2022, after a trial that lasted nearly 200 days over nearly four years, Soh, 66, and Quah, 62, were convicted of a record 349 successful charges in total that included false trading, price manipulation, deception and cheating. Soh received an additional eight charges for witness tampering.The duo lost their appeal in October 2025 to overturn their 2022 convictions for manipulating the shares of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and Liongold Corp – collectively referred to as BAL – between August 2012 and October 2013. They had orchestrated trades through 187 accounts across 20 financial institutions, many of which had been misled into extending financing for the scheme.In rejecting Soh and Quah’s appeals to reduce their jail sentences, chief justice Sundaresh Menon, justice Tay Yong Kwang and senior judge Andrew Phang in a judgment delivered on Mar 18, upheld the sentences handed down by High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng, finding that these were reasonable, in line with precedents from previous cases and not manifestly excessive.The prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutor Jiang Ke-Yue, had argued that none of the other market manipulation cases cited by Soh’s lawyer, Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan, including the collapse of Barings Bank, came close to the BAL scheme.Navigate Asia ina new global orderGet the insights delivered to your inbox.Delivering the judgment, CJ Menon found that Soh had “carefully coordinated his scheme to subvert the very purpose for which the Securities and Futures Act was introduced to regulate market activities and transparency, and harmed Singapore’s reputation as a financial centre”.The court also found “no reason to reduce” Quah’s sentence of 20 years, noting that she had “abused her position” as the former chief executive of Singapore-listed IPCO International.Quah, Soh’s ex-partner, had “relied heavily on the judge’s observation that she was (Soh’s) Girl Friday assistant,” or one who simply followed instructions and did not play a key role in the conspiracy.SEE ALSOCourt rejects appeal of 2013 penny stock crash mastermind John Soh and co-conspirator Quah Su-LingSwindlers list: White-collar criminals who went big – and paid bigProsecutors seek 40-year jail sentence for penny stock crash mastermind, 19½ years for ex-girlfriend“But there is a limit that (Quah) can take this argument, especially since she elected not to give evidence during the trial,” the court said.The prosecution said Quah played a far larger role than she claimed, and was involved in the scheme from its inception and oversaw trading operations, among other things.Quah, who began serving her 20-year sentence on Oct 17, 2025, and Soh, who has been in remand since Nov 25, 2016, arrived in court handcuffed and dressed in a purple prison jumpsuits.At least nine of her relatives and friends including classmates from Malaysia were in the public gallery and were allowed by the court to speak briefly with her before she was taken away by the prison guards.Quah’s lawyer N Sivananthan was also hit with a costs order of S$10,000 payable to the prosecution for “improper conduct” on his part during earlier appeal proceedings.This included alleging that the trial judge was biased against his client, had shown “excessive interference” in the trial, and had inferred guilt on Quah after finding Soh guilty of witness tampering.The court found that Sivananthan had “acted improperly”, “cast baseless aspersions against the judge and wasted court resources”.While Sivananthan had apologised and tendered a formal apology to the court, CJ Menon found that it “doesn’t absolve him of misconduct”, but said the “sting” was somewhat reduced, and “the matter can be laid to rest” with the costs order of S$10,000. THE STRAITS TIMESDecoding Asia newsletter: your guide to navigating Asia in a new global order. Sign up here to get Decoding Asia newsletter. Delivered to your inbox. Free.