Koh Boon Keak, had worked for Shankar’s Emporium from Dec 16th 2009 to Jan 31st 2018 as an accounts officer had committed the offence 52 times over six years, between August 2011 and December 2017 by forging cheques from the family’s other company He had used his ill-gotten gains to gamble away.
The alleged amount was nearly $1.4 million dollars.
His sentence for the offence, was seven years inprisonment.
The 42-year-old male had pleaded guilty dated June 18 to one count each of falstifying invoices and forging numerous cheques.
He was familiar with the payment and filing processes adopted by the company which he was given authority with keeping its cheques and preparing them for issuance for company matters, subject to at least two authorised signatories.
Koh had plotted a plan to dishonestly misappropriate money from Malaya Silk Store during year 2017.
He had taken blank company cheques with him and forged the signatures of two authorised signatories – a human resource executive and a finance manager.
He then forged invoices by the Management Corporation Strata Title of Orchard Shopping Centre to Malaya Silk Store for ” licence fees”.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Regina Lim had earlier said: “He did so by first creating a Microsoft Excel template using a genuine invoice he took home from the office.
“He would then amend the details in the template, send it to his e-mail address and print it out from the office to give the impression that it was a genuine invoice.”
All bogus cheques were issued to himself and the money would then be credited into his own bank account, afterwhich the firm’s account system was used to create false payment vouchers and file them with the forged invoices for audit purposes.
Annual audits for the period of July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018 was conducted and an auditor reported some entries Koh made in 2017 that were inconsistant and a police report was made on Dec 28, 2018 . No restitution was made by Koh said the DPP.