HE found a note asking for help under the door of his clinic one day.

It was from Wong Say Foon, 47, his regular patient. Worried that she might be sick, he called her back immediately.

The general practitioner, who requested to be known only as Dr Yap, said he lived in the same condominium as Wong.

He went to her apartment that day, 19 Apr 2004, and ended up falling for one of her scams. Dr Yap, 39, was cheated of $60,000.

He told The New Paper that Wong claimed she needed money urgently for her medical bills. He agreed to help as he pitied her for having to take care of four schooling-going children. Said Dr Yap: 'To assure me that she had the means to repay me, she told me about this investment opportunity which she had. She said she would be able to repay me in less than a month.

'I believed her since she was my neighbour and I knew her family and where she lived.' The court heard that Wong told Dr Yap that she had connections with a director of a handphone company. She said she could buy a particular model at $120 each and sell at a profit.

Wong said she had a ready buyer in Vietnam and would make a profit of $250,000 from the sale. She told Dr Yap she would give him $18,000 as his share of the profits if he agreed to lend her $60,000. She promised to repay him by the end of that month.

Dr Yap believed Wong and gave her a cheque for $60,000. But he never got a single cent back. He made a police report on 14May that year, after he realised that he had been cheated.

Said Dr Yap: 'She gave me a cheque that bounced and when I checked with the bank, I was told the said account had been closed months ago.

'Whenever I asked her when she would be repaying me, she would come up with various excuses like her money was with a foreign bank and it would take time to transfer the money.' Dr Yap described Wong as a confident and shrewd woman.

'Although she did not speak English fluently, she carried herself well and was a smooth talker,' he said.

'She also told me that her husband was a businessman.'

Dr Yap said that he later spoke to other neighbours, who claimed Wong had borrowed money from some of them.

'I heard that she charged them $15,000 for doing a ritual at their home,' he said. 'One of our neighbours, a company director, was also her victim but they have since relocated to China.'

Dr Yap said that Wong changed her car often but she would retain her old licence plate number. 'Every time we saw a new car in our condo compound with the same licence plate number, we would know that she had changed cars again,' he said.

He does not recall the brand of the cars she drove but said that one of them was an MPV. He did own checks

After he was duped, Dr Yap said that he did his own checks and found out that most of Wong's assets were in her husband's name.

'I knew then that I won't be able to get back my money. She's a recalcitrant who doesn't learn from her mistakes.

'Other victims told me that she would tell them she would never do it (cheat) again. But she never changed her ways.'

In an attempt to get back his loan, Dr Yap approached Wong's husband a number of times. 'Every time I spoke to him, he would brush it off by saying he would let his wife know. But I never heard from him after that,' he said.

Wong also stopped visiting Dr Yap's clinic after the latter made a police report.

'I think it would be embarrassing for her to see me. There was not a word of (apology) from her,' Dr Yap said.

It has been almost five years since he was conned, but Dr Yap said that he's still sore with Wong.

This article was first published in The New Paper.