Woman who cheated company to clear debts gets S$30,000 fine, 7 years’ jail
TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — To shake off loan-shark debts incurred by a former colleague, she cheated her company of nearly S$7 million worth of wine, and landed herself a seven-year jail term and a S$30,000 fine — a sentence both the prosecution and defence are appealing.
Luciana Lim Ying Ying, 43, was sentenced yesterday (Sept 21) for one count of criminal breach of trust, one count of cheating, one count of assisting in unlicensed moneylending and one count under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (CDSA). Seven other charges were taken into consideration. The prosecution had pressed for 13 years’ jail, while Lim’s defence lawyers sought a lower term of five years and two months.
But, District Judge Jasvender Kaur found 13 years a “disproportionate” punishment, noting that Lim’s offences were not motivated by greed. “Instead, she was under significant pressure from the activities of unlicensed moneylenders in relation to a third party’s illegal loan, and had acted in folly and from a general feeling of helplessness,” she said in her written judgment released yesterday.
Lim was a relationship manager at wines and spirits company Hock Tong Bee. The court heard she had acted as a guarantor for ex-colleague Edward Loh, who borrowed from loan sharks when he got into financial difficulties from gambling.
According to Lim’s lawyers, loan sharks started harassing her around January 2011 to demand payment for loans taken by Loh. Initially, she ignored them, but by March that year, up to nine loan sharks were hounding her by calling and sending her text messages three to five times an hour. They also threatened her by saying they were keeping watch on the whereabouts of her children and elderly mother.
Concerned about her loved ones’ safety, Lim, who is married with five children aged nine to 14, committed the offences. Her intention, the court heard, was to surrender once she had paid off the loan sharks.
For 18 months from July 2012 to January 2013, Lim would use contact details of professionals found on old name cards and the Internet to place bogus orders for expensive wine and spirits from the company she was working for, then sell them off at staff discount prices.
In total, she misappropriated 14,698 bottles of wines and spirits worth over S$7 million; 1,102 bottles were recovered from the buyers.
When the company’s finance department asked for outstanding payments for the fake orders, Lim would say they were delayed or would be made soon, the court heard.
When she was banned from conducting further sales because the outstanding amount under her customers’ accounts became too large, she used the credit card details of two existing customers to make a partial payment of S$4,200 for wines from the company in February 2013, which she then sold to others. DJ Kaur noted the hefty sum involved and Lim’s “systematic dishonesty” over a period of one-and-a-half years.
But, the “most significant mitigating factor” was that Lim “derived no pecuniary benefit”, said DJ Kaur, adding that Lim used about S$1.23 million to pay the loan sharks.
As such, while she had deemed the “appropriate starting point” for sentencing to be nine years’ jail, DJ Kaur gave Lim “a one-third discount” and sentenced her to six years’ jail for the criminal breach of trust charge.
