Several alleged victims and others have revealed some interesting facts about her, with some saying they suspect she used black magic because of the ease with which she convinced people to part with their money.

Cheah, 59, made headlines on Oct 4, when a court in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced her to a jail term of 51 months for identity theft and scamming a number of professional athletes and successful executives in the US.

She used several aliases and was arrested in 2017.

One of her victims, Alan Perez, described her as a master of language and the art of using emotion to get what she wanted.

Another victim, accountant Lau Ban Tin, told FMT his partner introduced him to Cheah in 1997 and that she later conned him out of RM150,000.

She claimed that his partner was in deep financial trouble but that she could not help him immediately because she didn’t yet have the money. But she gave him a post-dated cheque.

She told Lau not to talk about the matter to the partner because he had his male pride.

“I was convinced, and so I issued a cheque for RM150,000 made payable to him,” he said. “In front of me, she called his secretary and asked for his bank account number so she could directly transfer the money to him.”

However, two weeks later, the post-dated cheque bounced and she became untraceable.

Her victims in the US described Cheah as having “near-mystical powers of persuasion” and wowing them with claims such as that she was the granddaughter of Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, or a close friend of former US president Barack Obama.

Some of Cheah’s Malaysian victims said they felt charmed by her and had since suspected that she practised black magic.

“The way she convinced people with her lies was unbelievable,” said a victim who asked to be anonymous.

He said he gave Cheah RM620,000 when she told him a friend in financial trouble needed help. She also told him she was friends with owners of certain listed companies and the money would end up as an investment.

“She also tricked me into signing a hire-purchase agreement for a BMW car under her daughter’s name,” he said, but added that he managed to get ownership of the car in the end.

He said he and the other victims liked Cheah and became friends with her. “I think she practises black magic and uses voodoo or something like that.”

He got to know Lau and other victims when their search for Cheah brought them into contact with each other.

They all had similar stories. They were impressed that she had high connections. They lent her money with the promise that she would pay them with funds from overseas. They ended up with huge holes in their pockets.

After police reports were made, Utusan Malaysia published an article on Jan 28, 2000, mentioning police efforts to track Cheah down.

“We did manage to locate her and she was remanded in 2002,” the anonymous source said, adding that they hired investigators to find her.

However, he said, police eventually released her and did not fully explain why. This strengthened his belief that she practised black magic.

According to Lau, the victims lost track of her after finding out that she had gone to the US, absconding with their money.

Before Cheah’s escape to the US, Lau said, he and the other victims had written letters asking the authorities to locate and arrest her again, but they received lukewarm responses.

“It was like they had fallen under her spell as well.”

According to documents the victims showed FMT, the authorities they appealed to included the police, the immigration department, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Prime Minister’s Office. This was when Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was prime minister.

Cheah gave her name as Lee Sau Hoong to US authorities. This was the name she used to  enter the US.

The real Lee, according to Washington Post, is a housewife in a Kuala Lumpur suburb who has said she has never met Cheah.

When Cheah was arrested in 2017, she was living in a US$14,000-a-month apartment in Los Angeles, leased under the name of a friend’s unwitting mother.

Upon finding out that she had been jailed, Lau and the other victims lodged a police report against Cheah in Kuala Lumpur.

In the report, Lau wrote: “I believe the US government will deport her to Malaysia once her jail term has expired. When she is in Malaysia after serving her jail term, I hope the Malaysian authorities will put her on trial for the many cheating cases she has committed.”

The Washington Post reported that Cheah had claimed her identity theft victims allowed her to use their identities and she planned to pay them back for the debts she had incurred.

In a phone interview from jail, the Post reported, Cheah described the people who spoke against her as “not victims at all”, saying they had “nothing to do about the situation” that put her behind bars.