SINGAPORE — Having read about Nuruljannah Ahmad’s involvement in a case of criminal breach of trust at a previous workplace, the director of a childcare centre in Sengkang carried out an audit and found that she had misappropriated a total of S$78,423.

On Tuesday (June 29), Nuruljannah, 34, pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal breach of trust by an employee, and was jailed for 23 months.

Court documents showed that Nuruljannah had been working as a supervisor at the Star Learners childcare centre at 266 Compassvale Bow since December 2014. She had committed the offences while she was under investigation and prosecution for the previous offence.

She was reported for the misappropriation of monies by the centre’s director, Ms Jessica Lim Lei Mei, on Feb 23 in 2016.

As the centre’s supervisor, Nuruljannah was entrusted to collect the payment for childcare fees and other miscellaneous items from the parents of the students, who paid in either cash or cheque.

Nuruljannah would take the cash and cheques home for safe-keeping, and once a month, Ms Lim would visit the centre to collect them from her, court documents stated.

Nuruljannah would also submit a cash and cheque summary to Ms Lim, which set out the collections for the month.

Ms Lim would then check the cash and cheques collected against the summary. Nuruljannah would also record the collections on a payment record, which she was supposed to sign.

Investigations found that the offences occurred between Jan 4 in 2015 and Feb 5, 2016. During this period, Nuruljannah had stopped accurately recording the payments she collected from the parents in the cash and cheque summary.

That way, Ms Lim did not suspect that anything was amiss when she was given less than she should have collected.

Court documents also stated that when new students signed up, Nuruljannah would not register them in the centre’s system and similarly misappropriated the payments for registration.

Using this method, Nuruljannah was able to steal a total of S$78,423, which she used for her own expenses. To date, she has paid back only S$5,434 in restitution.

Ms Lim was prompted to conduct an audit on Star Learner’s accounts only after she read that Nuruljannah had embezzled money from her previous employer, Kinderland Educare Services, in a newspaper report published on Feb 5 in 2016.

The Straits Times reported then that Nuruljannah was a vice-principal of Kinderland Childcare Centre at Republic Polytechnic when she stole S$9,664 between January and May 2014.

Nuruljannah was fined S$10,000 on the day of the report’s publication.

Anyone found guilty of criminal breach of trust by an employee is liable to be punished with a jail term of up to 15 years or a fine, or both.