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HR manager jailed for cheating S$125,000 by replacing insurer's bank details with her own

SINGAPORE — A 33-year-old woman was sentenced to one year, two months and two weeks’ jail on Wednesday (Feb 16) for cheating about S$125,000 from her employer.

Siti Damaryanti Md Rashid, 33, used the money to repay her debts and loans.
Siti Damaryanti Md Rashid, 33, used the money to repay her debts and loans.
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SINGAPORE — A 33-year-old woman was sentenced to one year, two months and two weeks’ jail on Wednesday (Feb 16) for cheating about S$125,000 from her employer.

Siti Damaryanti Md Rashid worked as a human resource and officer manager at Ovivo Singapore, a water treatment supplier, when she committed the offences in 2020.

She pleaded guilty in a district court to one count of cheating, with another charge of criminal breach of trust taken into consideration for sentencing.

The court heard that the company’s insurer, AIA Singapore, provided payment details of an employee’s insurance premium — including AIA’s bank account details — to Siti in her capacity as an HR manager.

Siti was responsible for forwarding this to her company’s finance controller, who would then make payment to AIA.

Instead of doing this, she replaced AIA’s banking details with her own on May 14, 2020. The company’s finance controller ended up making two payments totalling S$125,355 into Siti’s UOB account.

Siti used the money to repay her debts and loans.

In July and August that year, she paid AIA back with about S$48,000. The Ovivo employee whose insurance premium Siti had taken advantage of then told the finance controller that she had not received her insurance claim, prompting the finance controller to follow up with AIA.

When the insurer told her the company had failed to pay the policy premiums, she confronted Siti who admitted to her offences.

She made further restitution of S$5,000 on Sept 9 that year, then said she would pay the remaining amount of S$72,107 through a cheque.

When she later told the finance controller she could not do this, the other woman lodged a police report.

The prosecution sought 16 to 18 months’ jail, acknowledging that she had paid back some of the money to AIA even before she was caught and that her modus operandi was “not particularly complex”, but that she had exploited the trust reposed in her as an HR manager.

For cheating, Siti could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

Related topics

court crime cheat criminal breach of trust insurance premium

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