Yahoo News Account executive jailed for siphoning over $106,000 from employer
An account executive who forged company cheques and stole $106,390.62 from her employer was jailed 12 months on Tuesday (24 October). Yeo Kim Lan, 54, had earlier pleaded guilty to 10 counts of forgery. Twenty other similar charges were taken into consideration during her sentencing.
The court heard that part of Yeo’s job at MSG Singapore was to prepare company accounts, audits and cheques. She was also required to prepare bank transfer forms and cheques from MSG Singapore and its parent company, NSG Asia. Between 2 April 2014 and 2 June 2016, Yeo forged 30 company cheques under NSG Asia’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation bank account.
After handing a cheque she had prepared to the company’s director, Tan Pel Hui, to authorise payment to MSG Singapore, she would then alter the name of the payee listed on the cheque. She did so by using typewriter correction tape to cancel out the original name and would then insert her own name with a typewriter.
Yeo would then cash the cheques or have the funds deposited into her POSB bank account. The amount listed on the cheques was usually $3,807.06, apart from three occasions when the sum was $1,200.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiam Jia Min said that Yeo covered up her misdeeds by listing said funds under the company’s debtor ledger during audits. Yeo also covered up the shortfall in MSG Singapore’s bank account by altering the bank transfer forms for fund transfers from NSG Asia’s foreign dollar account to NSG Asia’s Singapore dollar account and changing the payee to MSG Singapore.
The crimes were uncovered on 25 June last year, when Tan asked Yeo for both NSG Asia and MSG Singapore’s bank statements. Yeo lied that the bank did not issue any statements, but Tan discovered otherwise when he contact the bank. Yeo then provided falsified bank statements to Tan who later discovered the truth about the documents. Tan then conducted an internal audit and lodged a police report.
Yeo claimed that she spent her ill-gotten gains on the interest accrued on her pawn tickets, bank debts and gambling expenses at Singapore Pools. She has since made full restitution of the amount she stole.
DPP Thiam called for the court to impose a 12-month jail term, given that the offences were pre-mediated and involved a large sum of money. For committing forgery, Yeo could have been jailed up to 15 years and fined on each charge.
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