SINGAPORE: A woman who misappropriated more than S$1.8 million from her employer was handed a jail term of three years and three months on Monday (March 23).
Judy Teh Mui Eng, 61, who was previously a director of several pubs, according to the business registry, siphoned the money over seven years to fund her own businesses and family expenses.
She pleaded guilty to 26 charges involving forgery and dealing with the benefits of her criminal conduct on Jan 12.
More than 130 similar charges were taken into consideration during her sentencing.
While Teh has made full restitution, Deputy Public Prosecutor Yee Jia Rong stated that “the offences continued until they were discovered”.
“She did not own up on her own accord and to face the music. It was only after her offences were discovered that she stopped her offending, as the game was up,” DPP Yee said.
Teh committed the offences between June 2010 and April 2017, while she was employed as a personal assistant to a director of a hire-purchase company.
Her responsibilities included preparing payment vouchers and cheques payable to her boss’ brother, who was also a director of the same company.
Between June 2010 and March 2015, she prepared cheques for her boss made out to a credit card company or a bank, falsely claiming that his brother had asked for advance payments.
Her boss signed the cheques and corresponding payment vouchers that were in his brother’s name.
Teh added her own particulars to the back of the cheques before depositing them into accounts, including those linked to her.
When she found out her boss’ brother had cancelled accounts linked to his bank and credit card, she came up with another scheme to continue stealing the company’s funds – using a pen with erasable ink to prepare cheques and payment vouchers.
She would erase the payee’s details and replace them with the names of her own companies, doing this between December 2014 and April 2017.
Teh was caught after her boss discovered the offences in May 2017 and launched an internal investigation.
In her mitigation, she said she was truly remorseful and had even taken loans and pawned her jewellery to raise funds to repay her employers.
Business records show she remains the chief executive of a pub in Aliwal Street. - The Straits Times/ANN
