46-year-old Tan Chen Nee, a finance executive who worked for a company dealing with electronic parts, Top Atlantic, misappropriated U$774,500 (about SGD $1.03 million) from her company and transferred it to a Facebook friend whom she had never met before.
She pleaded guilty to 1 count of criminal breach of trust and was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment on 10 February.
Context
Tan said that she transferred the money to a “Kelvin Smith Gordon” who claimed that he needed the money to pay for an investment project called “Ayaland”.
Tan’s work duties included managing the financial administration matters of the company and preparing its accounts.
Between 16 February 2016 to 17 January 2017, Tan created 26 fake payment vouchers and conned one of her superiors into approving them, in order to hide the fact that she was transferring money into various bank accounts in Hong Kong, Bangkok and the Philippines.
Her superior had approved the fraudulent expenditures because he trusted her, and Tan later confessed to what she had done.
The police were later alerted to the incident on 10 August 2017, and Tan has since made about US$53,400 in restitution to the company so far.