42 months’ jail for Woodlands wet market stall supervisor who pocketed S$734,000 from cash sales over 3 years
SINGAPORE — The supervisor of a pork meat stall at a Woodlands wet market pocketed about S$734,000 from cash sales over a period of more than three years.
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- Sun Chao, 39, admitted taking S$734,000 from cash sales at a Woodlands wet market stall where he worked as supervisor
- Sun was meant to keep the cash in a locked drawer to be collected later by another worker
- Over a period of more than three years, he took cash sums on repeated occasions before handing over the takings to another person
- He was sentenced to 42 months' jail
SINGAPORE — A supervisor of a pork meat stall at a Woodlands wet market pocketed about S$734,000 from cash sales over a period of more than three years.
On Friday (May 24), Sun Chao, a 39-year-old from China, was sentenced to 42 months' jail for his offences, which took place from 2019 to April 2022.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal breach of trust, with another two for related offences taken into consideration during sentencing.
WHAT HAPPENED
At the time of his offences, Sun was working for JMS Trading and Supplies at a pork meat stall in a wet market located at Block 678A Woodlands Avenue 6.
He started working for the company in 2013 and was appointed as a supervisor in 2017.
The stall was heavily reliant on cash transactions, with the proceeds of its daily sales kept in a locked drawer at the stall.
Sun’s task was to tally up all the proceeds and hand them to another company representative for collection at about 1pm each day.
However, on repeated occasions between Jan 1, 2019 to April 30, 2022, he would misappropriate some of the cash from the sales proceeds before it was placed in the drawer and handed over to the representative.
Court documents showed that from Jan 1 to Dec 31 in 2019, he misappropriated around S$195,970.
He misappropriated another sum of around S$369,700 from January to December of 2020.
These sums formed the basis for the charges to which he pleaded guilty.
In 2021, he also misappropriated about S$156,060 and a further S$13,125 in the period up to April 2022. These two sums formed the basis for the charges taken into consideration.
On May 31 in 2022, Mr Michael Choy Meng Kiat, a JMS director, filed a police report against Sun for his offences.
Court documents did not disclose how his offences were exposed or why he was able to get away with them for so long.
So far, Sun has paid back S$40,000 of the money he took.
On Friday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Koh Yi Wen sought a sentence of 42 to 48 months’ jail, saying that Sun was “motivated by greed” and as a stall supervisor, he had “exploited loopholes” in the system in order to steal the cash.
For each count of criminal breach of trust, he could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.
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