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Alice Yan

A human resources employee in Singapore who is in charge of her company’s payroll system has been jailed for 18 months for making bogus pay claims for herself involving nearly S$200,000 (US$148,000).
Tan Lee Nah, 53, was a high-flying HR associate director at D’Perception Singapore, an interior design firm.
In May 2017, just two months after she had joined the company, Tan started to submit false claims for expenses, up until she was caught in November 2019.
She pleaded guilty on June 3 this year to two charges of sham reimbursement and one of criminal breach of trust for cashing two cheques.

A judge said Tan treated the company’s coffers like her “personal piggy bank”, the news portal, todayonline.com, reported.
The court found Tan claimed false travel expenses, ranging from S$1,000 (US$750) to S$10,000, each month.
From January to November of 2019, she added mobile phone expenses, paid holiday allowances and some extra expenses to her claims.
In August 2017, she was given two cheques and tasked to transfer S$3,000 to the Central Provident Fund (CPF) as two months’ contributions for a new employee.
However, she misappropriated the cheques and put them in her own account.
Tan was the sole person with the password to the company’s payroll system, and it was routine practice for her to input all the staff’s salaries on the system.
She would then print the salary sheet and present it to be signed by the firm’s managing director and chairman, a report on zaobao.com said.
Her scheme was finally exposed by an employee who saw a copy of Tan’s salary statement on the printer, which showed she had received allowances in addition to her basic salary.
The colleague alerted management which launched an investigation, and called the police a month later.

Tan told the court that the money she had misappropriated was spent on her child’s education and her parents’ medical bills.
She had not compensated her employer because she lacked the financial means to do so.
There are a few cases of employees making substantial false expense claims that get reported by mainland media.
A former Beijing-based HR manager of a foreign telecoms giant was sentenced to four years in prison in 2009 for embezzling 4.8 million yuan (US$670,000) from fake expenses he filed in the name of a person who no longer worked for the company, reported news website, Sina.


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Submits false claims after joining firm, continues crimes for 2.5 years, treats firm’s coffers like ‘personal piggy bank’


A human resources staffer from Singapore who was the only person entrusted with the company payroll system’s password, ripped off her employer for two and a half years before she was caught.


Singapore

Scams and swindles

Crime