Jail for personal assistant who siphoned S$250,000 from boss by forging signature on cheques
SINGAPORE — While working as the personal assistant of a beauty salon chain’s chief executive officer, Lo Siang Ting forged her signature on dozens of personal cheques over four years.
Lo managed to siphon about S$258,800 from her boss, spending the ill-gotten cash on personal expenses such as insurance policies and her domestic worker’s salary.
The 45-year-old was jailed for two years and 10 months on Wednesday (March 9) after pleading guilty to four counts of forgery of a valuable security or will. Five similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
This was not the Singaporean’s first brush with the law, the court heard. In 2004, Lo — who is also known as Teresa — was jailed 20 months for committing criminal breach of trust as a clerk or servant.
At the time of her latest offences from 2015 to 2019, she worked at beauty salon chain Bioskin Singapore. The company’s chief executive had hired her as a personal assistant to help with personal matters and the administration of the company’s finances.
Lo was provided with her boss’ personal cheque books, which were linked to her OCBC and HSBC bank accounts.
Between July 2015 and July 2019, she forged her boss’ signatures on cheques about twice a month, issuing them to herself. She deposited them and used the money to pay for her personal expenses.
These expenses included insurance policies for herself and her family members, her children’s personal expenses and her maid's salary.
Lo managed to evade detection because she was the sole person in control of and responsible for her boss’ cheque books.
It was not until August 2019 that Lo’s boss received a call from OCBC. The bank told her that it could not process a cheque because the signature did not match her specimen signature in the bank records.
Upon further verification, she discovered that Lo was the intended payee stated on the cheque. Later that same month, she confronted Lo, who initially refused to admit to her wrongdoing.
She then came clean when her boss sent her a screenshot of one of the forged cheques. She first admitted to only pocketing S$150,000, but later confessed to taking more than S$200,000.
Lo was fired on Aug 20, 2019 and arrested about a month later. She has not made any restitution to date.
For each forgery charge, she could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.
