Tan Chen Yen, 38-years-old, pleaded guilty to 6 charges including criminal breach of trust by a servant, buying and using counterfeit notes and falsifications of accounts.
He was sentenced to 7 years and 5 months of imprisonment on 20 December, with another 14 charges being considered for his sentencing.
What happened?
Tan was an employee for Bank Pictet & Cie in Marina Bay Financial Centre from February 2015 to August 2018 working as a banking operations specialist.
His job scope included being responsible for matters that concerned the safe that was on the bank’s premises that contained various currencies of notes, as well as facilitating the case deposits and withdrawals of the clients’ money.
He was also responsible for ordering currency notes from UOB to replenish the notes in the safe when they ran low.
Stealing methods
Tan started stealing money from the safe between 2016 and 2018.
He would take the real notes and replace them with counterfeit notes that he bought online or with blank paper that he cut up.
He would also withdraw more money than what his clients wanted and keep the excess amount for himself.
Finally caught
The crimes came to light on 31 August when a Pictet employee found an envelope containing blank sheets of paper cut into the shape of the currency notes.
The matter was then reported to the COO and a physical count of the currency notes was then ordered.
Tan later confessed to his crimes after learning that the envelope had been found – he had taken around $1.13 million and only $62,258 was restituted to the bank.
He admitted to spending the money on gambling and personal expenses.