A woman has been jailed in Singapore for duplicating her boss's signature and stealing $1.3 million from the company.
According to The Straits Times, the accused identified as Lim Hoon Choo (62) has been sentenced to jail for 12 years after she admitted to two charges of criminal breach of trust - involving $387,423 in 2012 and $548,309 in 2013. Moreover, she was also proved guilty of five counts of forgery.
Lim was an employee of an investment management firm called New Asian Capital (NAC) at Jalan Sultan. As a secretary her duties included issuing cheques on behalf of the firm and her boss, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Jun Hong as reported by the news agency.
Lim started copying her boss Ng Eng Ghee's signature from February 2010 and forged as many as 200 cheques. She made them payable to "Lim Hoon Choo". The NAC directors and Ng were unaware that it was her real name, as she was known in the office as Eve, and went unnoticed.
Moreover, it was also reported that she would doctor bank statements and cheque-book stubs to state that the payments made to her were "credit card payments".
It was only in October 2013 that these transactions came to notice and Ghee lodged a complaint stating that an employee had fraudulently issued cheques in her favour.
The Straits Times reported from February 2010 to September 2013 at least $1.3 million misappropriated from the company and a partial restitution of $141,920 was also made. When Lim was confronted she said that she gambled away the remaining money at Malaysian casinos.
According to the news portal, DPP Tan said Lim was largely unsupervised and worked alone in the office.
"This evinces the huge degree of trust reposed in the accused which she exploited to conduct her massive scam," he said.
However, lawyer Benjamin Frois said his client took revenge on her employer for miss treating her on several occasions. Lim claimed, as reported by the news agency, that she was sent on a "risky business" mission to Johor to interview a potential driver and was always looked down on for not being a graduate.
