A 23-year-old Malaysian, Liew Yu Er, working as an administrative assistant with a dance academy in Singapore, Dancepointe Academy, credited about 400,000 NTUC Linkpoints to herself, which is worth about SGD$4,000, according to Channel NewsAsia.
She then used the points to buy phones that she later sold off, as well as food and to pay off her loans to loansharks.
Liew was sentenced to 2 weeks imprisonment on Wednesday (3 May) after pleading guilty to a charge of cheating.
Her employer spoke up for her during her mitigation and said that she was still young and was a good worker.
Background
Liew worked for Dancepointe Academy, which was a business partner of NTUC Link, which run a customer loyalty programme where members are rewarded with loyalty points called Linkpoints when they shop with NTUC Link’s customers.
Liew’s job scope includes crediting Linkpoints to customers who qualified for the points.
At the beginning, she only credited Linkpoints that were not redeemed by the customers to her own card, but she later started crediting the Linkpoints her own card even where their transactions didn’t qualify for it.
From 21 August 2022 to 15 November 2022, Liew credited a total of 391,854.32 Linkpoints to herself over 145 occasions, and used the points to buy food at NTUC FairPrice, and 5 phones from the supermarket, which she later sold for about $1,200.
NTUC FairPrice then sent an enquiry on 15 November 2022 to an administration manager at NTUC Link to check on Liew’s Linkpoints, and she was found with almost 400,000 Linkpoints in her NTUC Plus! card through a period of three months.
A customer would have to spend about $290,000 in order to accumulate that many points.
The administrative manager then reached out to Liew’s company owner Tang Ee Liang about the transactions, and Tang then confronted Liew about it, and she admitted to what she had done.
She also agreed to pay back the money lost by Dancepointe Academy by having $500 deducted from her monthly salary, and has since paid back about $2,000.
Image source: rewards.link.sg