Jail for woman who ordered S$2,285 worth of food on Foodpanda with ex-boss’s credit card details

SINGAPORE — When she was working at stationery manufacturer Nippecraft, she would often make travel bookings and order food on the Foodpanda mobile application for her boss, the company's chief executive officer.

But when Lin Qian Dai Lin left the firm, she did not delete the CEO's credit card details from the app on her mobile phone. 

After she inadvertently ordered food with her former boss’s card and got away with it, she continued to take advantage of the lapse, placing S$2,285 worth of orders before she was caught.

On Tuesday (Jan 12), Lin was sentenced to five months’ jail. 

The 41-year-old Singaporean woman pleaded guilty to one count of cheating Nippecraft's CEO, Ms Connie Chan, on 73 occasions between July 13 and Sept 7 in 2019.

The court heard that Lin worked at the Singapore Exchange-listed company as Ms Chan’s personal assistant from April 2017 to February 2018. As part of her duties, Lin made official and personal purchases for Ms Chan using the latter's credit card details.

Because of this, Lin stored the details in the Foodpanda app on her own mobile phone.

Lin left the company in February 2018.

More than a year had gone by when Lin ordered some food from fast-food chain Burger King via Foodpanda and accidentally selected her former boss’s credit card as a payment mode.

When she realised her own credit card had not been charged and the act went unnoticed, Lin became “greedy” and charged her orders to the card repeatedly, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Rebecca Wong told the court.

She ordered food and beverages from many places. For instance, she once spent S$174.99 in a single order from Soon Lee Heng Fresh Fruits in Clementi West.

Ms Chan eventually made a police report on Oct 19, 2019, saying that she had detected multiple unauthorised transactions with Foodpanda even though she still had her credit card.

DPP Wong sought eight months’ jail after noting that Lin had made restitution of S$1,142 to Foodpanda.

Lin, who did not have a lawyer, said that she was “very sorry” for being greedy.

When sentencing her, District Judge Eddy Tham noted that she had pleaded guilty and “made the required restitution as set by the victim”.

“On the other hand, while each transaction was of a small account, due to the sheer number of transactions over a period of time, the amount came up to more than S$2,000. While not insignificant, it was not a very substantial amount either,” the judge added in explaining why he imposed a sentence lower than what the prosecution sought.

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