Lawyer David Rasif absconded from Singapore in June 2006 with about S$11.3 million of clients' money, then the largest such theft by a lawyer in the country's history, and remains at large under an Interpol notice. He is the father of influencer and DJ Jade Rasif, who has spoken publicly about growing up in the scandal's shadow.
Rasif was no marginal practitioner. Called to the Bar in 1990, he had seventeen years of experience and ran his own firm, David Rasif & Partners, from 1995, handling criminal and conveyancing work. The money he took included about S$10.7 million entrusted by an American couple for the purchase of a bungalow off Holland Road — funds held for a property completion, the most routine and trust-dependent transaction in legal practice.
Investigators reconstructed a hurried exit. In the days before he left, cheques and telegraphic transfers worth millions were moved through several countries, jewellery worth more than S$2 million was bought in a spree at a local jeweller, and on June 1, 2006, Rasif purchased 47 one-kilogram gold bars from United Overseas Bank for about S$1.65 million. The bars were handed over in a briefcase at a Toa Payoh car park for safekeeping; associates later hid portions in relatives' homes and were arrested for abetting the scheme.
Rasif was last seen having lunch with a colleague on June 2, saying he was travelling to Bangkok, and was last confirmed in Bangkok on June 5 with his wife, Joyce Fong, who had travelled separately for a company function. He told her he needed to go on to Japan to meet a client and did not return to Singapore with her. He never faced his clients again.
The professional consequences were total but theoretical. The Law Society pursued disciplinary proceedings and Rasif was struck off the roll of advocates and solicitors, formally in 2007 by a court of three judges according to a Ministry of Law summary — a punishment for a man beyond reach. He remains listed among Singapore's most wanted fugitives, and periodic media features mark the anniversaries of a disappearance now approaching two decades.
His family, by contrast, stayed and rebuilt in public. His daughters, including Jade Rasif, who became a well-known DJ, model and social-media personality, and fitness influencer Tyen Rasif, grew up answering for a father they did not choose, an angle later coverage has treated with increasing sympathy. Jade has discussed the family's loss of wealth and stability after 2006 in interviews, inverting the original story: the fugitive kept the money and the freedom, while the family kept the name and the questions.
Rasif's case is still cited whenever Singapore debates client-account safeguards for law firms, because its lesson is uncomfortable. Every control — trust accounts, audits, professional discipline — assumes the lawyer remains within reach of them. A sole proprietor who converts client funds into gold and jewellery, distributes value through acquaintances and boards a plane defeats the system in a weekend, which is why, nineteen years on, the file remains open and the name remains on Interpol's list.