Charlene Ashby Clay, 24-year-old, pleaded guilty on 4 January to 3 charges, including criminal breach of trust, and was sentenced to 16 months and 2 weeks imprisonment.
Four more charges that included cheating and falsifying accounts were considered for her sentencing.
She was previously caught embezzling money but her employer gave her a chance, and she then got caught again after she continued stealing money from the clinic’s earnings.
What happened?
Charlene was working as a dental assistant at Dr Smile Dental Clinic at Clementi Avenue 3, when the dentist Dr Hsu Wei Cheng, who is also the owner, was alerted to discrepancies in his clinic’s earnings.
About $44,861 was missing from the clinic’s system.
Dr Hsu then confronted Charlene, who admitted to embezzling and stealing the money paid by the clinic’s patients.
She would take the money paid to her by the patients and key the transaction into the system as electronic payment, intending to make the transaction harder to verify immediately.
Charlene pleaded with Dr Hsu not to cancel her work permit and he then gave her a chance, with the two agreeing that the sum of $44,861 will be paid via deductions of about $650 to $1050 from her monthly salaries.
A year later, Dr Hsu asked a patient to make a payment of $200 to which he was then told that the patient had already paid $3,700 for the entire operation.
This was against his clinic’s policy of charging the patients after their visit.
Dr Hsu then confronted Charlene, who admitted to stealing from the clinic again, this time stealing $113,520 by getting patients to transfer full payments to her PayNow account for a “discount”.
Charlene would then transfer small amounts of the money back into the clinic’s bank account for the treatment packages to avoid any suspicion.