A 61-year-old personal assistant who manipulated her company’s financial systems to embezzle more than SG$1.87 million (approximately RM5.8 million) has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Cheng Mei Eng (transliteration) pleaded guilty to 26 charges, including forgery and breach of trust, while another 132 related charges were taken into consideration during sentencing by the Singapore court yesterday.
The court heard that Cheng was the personal assistant to Hadi, a director at MBH Hire Purchase Pte Ltd. Between June 2010 and March 2015, Cheng executed a calculated scheme by preparing cheques with “American Express International Inc” or “UOB Card Centre” as the payees. She misled Hadi into believing these were official payments for his brother and co-director, Muliyanto. Once the cheques were signed, Cheng would write her own personal bank account numbers on the back to divert the funds for her personal use.
As her tactics evolved, Cheng resorted to using erasable ink to further deceive her employers. In late 2014, after discovering certain accounts had closed, she began writing the names of the directors’ other companies on the payees’ line with erasable pens. After obtaining the necessary signatures, she would erase the original names and replace them with the names of her own private firms, including Innova Alliance and Rejoice Entertainment. The stolen funds were subsequently used to finance her personal businesses and household expenses.
The betrayal was only uncovered in May 2017 when Hadi initiated an internal audit, leading to a police report in February 2018. During mitigation, Cheng’s lawyer argued for a lighter sentence, noting that she had made full restitution of the stolen RM5.8 million and paid the company’s RM308,000 legal fees. The defence also highlighted her status as a single mother supporting a son with narcolepsy and a daughter with medical issues, arguing that her imprisonment would jeopardise the livelihoods of her own employees.
However, the prosecution countered that Cheng did not stop her criminal activities voluntarily, but was only halted once her actions were detected. The presiding judge dismissed the personal hardships as grounds for a significant reduction in sentence, emphasizing the gravity of the breach of trust. Cheng was granted a two-month deferment to manage her business affairs and is scheduled to begin her sentence on 25 May.
