New sentence sends couple to jail for cheating student aid fund

A magistrate yesterday revised his own sentence of a couple convicted of cheating a government agency out of $223,273 in student aid, from 240 hours of community service to 11 months' immediate imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Pang Foun-hing, 53, and his wife, Wong Sau-kuk, 48, admitted defrauding the Student Financial Assistance Agency by concealing their assets, including an annual income of about $60,000 and the ownership of five Shamshuipo properties that earned about $400,000 a year.

The court previously heard that the agency had received two applications from the defendants' son, Pang Yun-sui, and three from their daughter, Pang Kit-fong, between 2001 and 2004, for a total of $223,273. The agency later confirmed that the applicants would not be entitled to the allowance since their family income exceeded the limit for applicants.

Pang and Wong, who pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud before Principal Magistrate Garry Tallentire in March, were sentenced a month later to 240 hours of community service.

Yesterday, the magistrate said it was not easy to determine the sentence in such cases. But he noted the prosecutor's view that although such fraud cases were common, they were serious and the community service order could not adequately reflect this.

After referring to a Court of Appeal judgment in 2002 in which a sentence of two-and-a-half years' imprisonment was imposed, the magistrate agreed with the prosecutor to revise Pang's and Wong's sentences from community service orders to imprisonment.