A 46-year-old administrative clerk was sentenced to four years and two months' jail for using erasable ink to forge 14 of her employer's cheques and deposit them into her bank account.
Seah Yuh Lih used to scrub out the names of genuine payees and replace the names with her own. This process helped her to illegally obtain more than $500,000 in cash.
On Wednesday, the court sentenced her after pleading guilty to five forgery charges and one count of dealing with the benefits of her criminal conduct. During sentencing, the court also considered 16 other charges including nine additional counts of forgery.
Seah, who was working at the Singapore branch of the Toyo Engineering Corporation, was responsible for managing company accounts and preparing cheques for payments to its suppliers.
The incidents of forgery took place between July 2015 and March 2016, when she used to write the payees' names on the cheques with erasable ink and got those signed by the firm's business manager.
Reports said that Seah exchanged more than $223,000 of her illegally obtained money for chips at Marina Bay Sands casino.
On May 5, 2016, an accountant from the company's Japan office informed the business manager about discrepancies that were revealed from a recent audit of the firm's bank account and its statements. Further checks showed that Seah was the payee on 14 cheques.
Seah pleaded the court for leniency and requested to allow her to serve her sentence after Chinese New Year that falls on February 16 as she wants to spend some time with her elderly parents.
The court has offered Seah bail of $15,000 and ordered to surrender herself at the State Courts on Feb 19. She could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined for each count of forgery.
