AN employee in the human resources department was sentenced to 18 months in prison for payroll fraud, pocketing over S$139,000 (RM483,441) in the form of false claims and embezzlements.
Tan Lee Nah, 53, tasked to supervise the company’s payroll system, had submitted false claims for expenditures two months into working in the interior designer firm in 2017 starting off as a human resource manager.
She was caught in November 2019.
Today Online reported that Lee Nah pleaded guilty on June 3 to two counts of cheating for submitting false claims and charged with criminal breach of trust after pocketing two company cheques.
She was then promoted to being the firm’s HR associate director and was the only employee to have password access to the payroll.
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Her first bogus claims were filed in November 2018, for a S$4,000 (RM13,910) bill of “transport allowance” and an “extra allowance” of S$1,500 (RM5,216) into the system as well as entering another claim S$5,500 (RM19,126) the next month.
From January to November 2019, Lee Nah filed multiple bogus claims under several categories which include allowances for mobile phone usage and “backpay handphone” with claims for “paid annual leave” and “back pay of basic” which amounted to a whooping S$125,293 (RM435,719).
Not only that, Lee Nah was found misappropriating funds earlier in August 2017 where she cashed in two company cheques totalling S$3,147 (RM10,943), meant for a new employee’s Central Provident Fund’s (CPF) contributions, into her personal account.
Her acts were revealed after the company’s managing director and finance director were informed of her allowances received on top of her basic salary - asserting that she was “not allowed to claim” them. A police report was lodged against the employee.
During the trial, the prosecution sought to sentence her between 18 months and six weeks’ jail, and 18 months and eight weeks’ jail, seeing that her crimes spanned for a period of more than two years.
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But her lawyer countered the sentence, seeking for a lighter term of 15 months and six weeks’ jail, reasoning that the accused felt “deep remorse” and pled guilty at the early phase of the trial.
In the trial, Lee Nah’s lawyer told the judge that she took the company’s funds out of desperation to afford her son’s education along with her parents’ medical bills.
The district judge said that she had “dipped into the company’s coffers like her personal piggy bank”, also taking into consideration the 18 charges before her.
Lee Nah made no restitution to her company as she had insufficient funds to do so.
