Man embezzled 91 mobile phones and watches worth more than $64,000 for gambling and buying amulets

SINGAPORE: A warehouse assistant embezzled 91 mobile phones and watches, amounting to more than $64,000, within a year. The 48-year-old suspect was charged with breach of trust and pleaded guilty. 

Case investigations revealed that the suspect was an employee of an authorised distributor of Xiaomi products, and part of his job description was to receive goods from suppliers, store them, and organise the products in a warehouse at Toa Payoh. 

The suspect began his crime in November 2021, secretly putting phones, watches, and other products from the warehouse into his bag and taking them home. The suspect will then lose the items for sale on online selling platforms at below-market prices. He will personally meet up with his buyers, receive their payments, deliver their products, and delete the sales information from the platform once the transactions are done. 

Between November 2021 and September 2022, the suspect stole and sold a total of 91 products with a total value of $64,079 but sold them for only $42,805. 

Further investigations revealed that the suspect used the money from his sales for personal purposes, including daily food, football betting, offerings to Buddha statues, and buying amulets. The crime was also exposed when the company figured out one of the phone buyers, who then revealed to have purchased the phone through the suspect’s online platform. 

In similar news, where an employee stole from their employers, a female staff member of a dental clinic stole cash from the clinic’s cash register. She also falsified the clinic’s sales record and encouraged the patients to pay in cash. 

The 30-year-old suspect faces four charges, including criminal breach of trust, forgery, a violation of the Code and Criminal Procedure, and misuse of computers. She then pleaded to one charge, and the remaining charges are to be taken into consideration by the judge. 

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