By Dawn Tay

RECENTLY crowned Miss Singapore World Ris Low, 19, had earlier been found guilty of credit-card fraud.

The beauty queen was convicted of five charges of misappropriation, cheating using illegally obtained credit cards, and impersonating their users' identities.

The first-time offender was sentenced in May this year to 24 months of supervised probation, said a Subordinate Courts spokesman in response to a query from my paper.

Another 60 charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing, he said.

Court documents show that Miss Low spent a total of more than $2,400 on at least four separate occasions, using at least three different credit cards in April and May last year.

She bought two gold anklets worth almost $1,000, a $698 mobile phone, and food and drinks at a swanky restaurant.

It is not known how she obtained the credit cards.

my paper understands that her previous employer, a healthcare company, made a police report about her in April last year.

It suspected that Miss Low, who worked there for five months as a patient-service assistant, had used credit cards belonging to its patients. It asked her to leave the following month.

Before leaving, she was said to have returned a part - an unspecified sum - of the total amount she had spent using the cards.

When contacted, Miss Low, now a student, said that she was "not in a position to comment".

The organiser of the Miss Singapore World pageant, ERM World, did not respond to queries as to whether it was aware of her criminal record during the pageant.

The international Miss World pageant will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in December.

It is unclear whether Miss Low will be allowed to leave the country to take part in it.

dawnt@sph.com.sg

- Additional reporting by Jamie Koh

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