Jail for executive who cheated employer of dietary pills worth S$236,800 to sell on his own

SINGAPORE — Abusing his position as a firm’s business development executive, Derek Tan Shao Ta tricked a subordinate into allowing him to remove about S$236,800 worth of the firm's dietary supplements from the premises. Tan later sold the supplements and kept the proceeds for himself.

On Thursday (May 4), the 40-year-old Singaporean was sentenced to three years’ jail.

Tan’s case initially went to trial on March 6 this year, but he then chose to plead guilty to a single charge of cheating that day. Four similar charges were taken into consideration for his sentencing.

WHAT HAPPENED

Court documents showed that Tan’s offences took place between May and July 2020. At the time, he was employed by Klarity Group as a business development executive.

It was not stated if Tan is still employed by the firm, whose main business is the sale of a dietary supplement called Crystal Tomato Dietary Supplement.

Klarity had distributorship agreements in place with an undisclosed supplier, allowing it to acquire Crystal Tomato to sell in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Singapore was not among the agreed territories.

The firm’s main customers are professionals in the aesthetics industry, including medical practitioners, hospitals and clinics operating in those regions.

At the time of Tan's offences, he took advantage of his subordinate, Ms Wong Gur Ching, whose responsibilities included handling logistics at the company.

For instance, when Klarity received goods from its suppliers, she dealt with the paperwork, packaged the goods and arranged for the delivery of the goods to the company’s customers.

Tan deceived Ms Wong on at least 12 occasions, by lying to her that he had authorisation from the firm’s chief executive officer, Dr Kan Wai Ming, to take boxes of Crystal Tomato away from the office.

On these occasions, each time the company received Crystal Tomato from its supplier, Tan would inform Ms Wong that he required a number of boxes of the product and that he would be exporting them from Singapore.

Later, he would tell Ms Wong to have these boxes packaged and separated from the remaining boxes in the consignment.

When Ms Wong asked Tan if he had been authorised by Dr Kan to take the boxes, Tan would lie that he had been.

He would then instruct Ms Wong to keep the boxes he had requested either below her desk, or separated in the company’s storeroom with the key to the storeroom left in an agreed place.

Tan would then enter the office late at night, when no one else was present, to retrieve the boxes.

Each time this happened, Ms Wong would later ask Tan for the bills and invoices so that she could document their export. Tan would offer her assurances and then give excuses to delay providing them.

In this way, he was able to dishonestly receive at least 2,631 boxes of Crystal Tomato, which were valued at at least S$90 a box.

It was not stated how exactly Tan’s dishonesty was uncovered, but court documents showed that he was caught by a surveillance camera retrieving the boxes from a storeroom at about 3am on July 10 in 2020.

About a month later, Dr Kan filed a police report over the theft of the 2,631 boxes on Aug 26. It was not mentioned when Tan was arrested.

Investigations later revealed that Tan sold the products to at least two people in Singapore, for at least S$85 a box. It was not known how much money he reaped from his illegal conduct.

He told these buyers to transfer the payment into his personal bank account, or in cash, which he kept for his own use.

Tan lied to one of the buyers that the payment must be paid to his personal bank account, because Dr Kan did not want it to be traced to Klarity Group.

To date, Tan has not made any restitution to the company.

For his offence, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.