Verbal duels with people online can bring more trouble than it's worth.

Bernie Wong is a pastry chef and proprietor of Diabolical Sins, a desserts company that offers a selection of cakes and other pastries. 

According to their website:

"Born in Singapore, trained and worked in Australia for the past 14 years. After dropping out of an engineering major in university, i fell in love with cooking and discovered my passion in baking & making pastries. Graduated from baking school, I started working in Sydney & Melbourne for 4 years for Lindt Chocolate Cafe & other major hotels.

I moved to Whitsundays, Great Barrier Reef (Queensland) where i spent another 4 years as a pastry chef and head baker on the private resort of Hayman Island, Whitsundays, Queensland.

​

Missing Singaporean food, friends and family, i decided to return back to Singapore. My religion is great food. I worship food done by cooks who pour their love & passion into their food. Without great food, life would be meaningless to me.

​

In 2016, Diabolical Sins Desserts Singapore is established. My style; Contemporary meets Classical desserts, no space too small, no flavors too bold, no options not being considered.

​

- BERNIE -"

It all kicked off when Wong posted a Facebook comment on a Mothership article about Sunset Grill & Pub, which had prominently displayed the flag of the Confederate States of America.

Another user, Irddy Tan, saw his comment and disagreed.

The two went back and forth until Wong posted these final two comments:

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This is where the fun and games usually stops, but Wong appears to have taken it one step further.

He sent a private message to Tan, who then posted it on the public wall of Diabolical Sins' Facebook page.

Diabolical Sins' Facebook page had been taken down by Tuesday morning. But in the screenshot above, the message reads:

"Woofy. Will send you all the flowers when your whole family up lorry."

In case you were wondering, "Up lorry" is a colloquial term used to refer to death. It was inspired by how coffins would be hoisted onto a lorry to transport the dead to burial grounds.

Another user, David Lee, contacted Mothership and told us he was thinking of buying some pastries from Diabolical Sins when he chanced upon Tan's post on their Facebook page.

He then got in touch with Tan and saw the argument between him and Wong in the original Mothership article's Facebook comment thread.

Lee left a one-star review on Diabolical Sins' Facebook page, as he wanted to "warn people about the owner's unethical behaviour". This prompted a reaction from Diabolical Sins.

Lee noted that this comment was posted on Thursday, Aug. 10 at 1.30pm. He then showed us the following screenshots of messages from Wong, beginning at 1.31pm on the same day, or almost immediately after the business initially responded:

It must be said, it's pretty impressive that Hokkien, Tamil, Tagalog and English swear words were all used within one message.

Although there are many Bernie Wongs out there, it seems that the Facebook user with the colourful language and the chef of Diabolical Sins are one and the same.

Note the same Facebook profile pic, and the fact that Bernie has been posting photos to the timeline of Diabolical Sins's Facebook page:

Also in the message to Lee, Wong's personal Facebook profile description matches the details in the chef's biography found on Diabolical Sins' website.

We spoke to Wong over the phone on Monday night, and he confirmed he is indeed the owner of Diabolical Sins, that the Facebook profile referred to above was indeed his, as well as the fact that he did send messages to Tan and Lee online. He described his side of the story as follows:

"I think David Lee is a troll. I run an online business and I have never seen him or his Facebook account before he left the one star review. If I do business with a customer and we disagree, and he leaves a review, at least something happened. But I'd never even seen his account before he left the rating. I blocked him already and I'm not going to talk to him any more.

As for Irddy Tan, it started with a comment I made on Mothership's article about the Confederate flag (hanging inside the Sunset Grill & Pub restaurant). I was trying to make a pun about General Robert E. Lee and the Lee family. He started going on about the history of General Lee and I started being sarcastic to him. I'm not racist, I think that hanging the flag is meant to be a decoration. The pub might be serving Southern U.S. food and I don't think hanging the flag is political. When I posted, it was my personal opinion. But then they come to my business and made it personal. We don't want to be below the belt."

Wong said he blocked both Tan and Lee on Facebook, and would not be contacting them further.

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