SINGAPORE — Using her position as an accounting manager at luxury watch and jewellery firm Chopard, Chew Siew Lang encashed cheques meant for the firm’s expenses and made false entries in its accounts.

In all, she misappropriated S$11.2 million over about six-and-a-half years. Chew, 53, had spent S$2.1 million of that amount on 4D betting.

The money she pocketed was also a “small fraction” or less than 6 per cent of Chopard’s yearly revenue here, the High Court heard.

Chew faced a total of 243 charges, with the prosecution proceeding on 56 charges. On Tuesday, she was convicted of falsification of accounts, using the benefits of criminal conduct and criminal breach of trust.

In Chew’s capacity as the accounting manager, she was responsible for all accounting matters, including handling cheques, checking receipts from Chopard’s boutique sales, preparing schedules of accounts, among other things. The firm has a head office in Geneva, Switzerland.

Within a year from January 2006, she dishonestly misappropriated about S$262,000 by encashing 31 pre-signed cheques — meant for paying Chopard’s urgent expenses when they arise — herself or directing other employees to do so.

After she became one of the authorised signatories of the firm’s UOB account, Chew prepared false payment vouchers based on details in genuine invoices Chopard received from suppliers on 701 occasions between May 2007 and August 2012.

She would then write cheques and hand them to an authorised co-signatory for the latter’s signature – either before or after she has signed them – as each cheque required two authorised signatures.

After obtaining the signature, Chew would amend the cheque by erasing the names of the payees in the cheque and replacing them with her own name. She could do so because she used a pen with erasable ink, the court heard.

Using that modus operandi, she pocketed about another S$10.9 million after she deposited or encashed the cheques.

To avoid detection, Chew created false accounting entries in Chopard’s general ledger, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Kwek Chin Yong.

Chew also kept a record of the amounts she had misappropriated by marking the cheque payments in the firm’s daily cash flow report to remind herself she needed to account for these payments.

DPP Kwek added that Chew also made sure she pocketed less than S$50,000 each time as anything more than that had to be co-signed by a signatory from Chopard’s head office.

The court also heard that between February 2009 and August 2012, Chew issued cash cheques totaling about S$2.1 million from her personal account to Kris Store, an authorised retailer for the Singapore Pools, to pay for her 4D bets. This sum came, in part, from the money she had pocketed in Chopard.

The prosecution on Tuesday called for an aggregate sentence of between 18 and 20 years to deter like-minded offenders, among other reasons.

In her mitigation plea, Chew’s lawyer Daniel Chia cited a psychiatric report, which diagnosed her with impulse control disorder that manifested in “pathological gambling”.

Justice Woo Bih Li then adjourned the hearing for the defence to seek further evidence to show a causal link between Chew’s condition and her offences.

Separately, Chopard also started civil proceedings against Chew in 2012 and has so far recovered about S$197,000.

Chew could face up to 15 years’ jail and fined for each count of criminal breach of trust and 10 years’ jail and/or fined for falsifying documents.

For using the proceeds from her alleged criminal conduct, she could be jailed up to seven years and/or fined S$500,000.