Man sentenced to 2 years jail for misappropriation
By Shaffiq Alkhatib | Posted: 11 February 2011 1808 hrs
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SINGAPORE: A former employee of an automobile company was sentenced on Friday to two years' jail after misappropriating S$77,956.79 for his own use.
Eric Lim Peng Hong, who used to work at Teck Wei Auto Trading, sold a car worth S$85,593.87 to 53-year-old Ng Yek Heng on January 8 2008. And it took Mr Ng less than 20 days to settled the full amount by paying cash to Lim in instalments.
However, he later became suspicious of Lim as he did not hand his customer any receipts after receiving the monies.
It turned out that Lim had pocketed S$40,000 of Mr Ng's money for his own use.
The 38-year-old Lim committed a similar offence when he was employed at another company, Kampong Auto Trading.
He misappropriated S$8,563 of his customers' cash deposits between December 2008 and February 2009.
Separately, Lim's actions also caused one of his customers' cars to be repossessed on December 12 2008.
The victim, 54-year-old Abu Osman M Yassin had earlier given him S$12,877.79 which was supposed to be used to settle an outstanding loan with Citibank Finance. However, Lim only paid the firm some S$3,576 and pocketed $9,301.79.
Lim has also pleaded guilty to misappropriating another S$16,000 on April 16 last year while another charge involving S$4,092 was taken into consideration.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Paul Wong told the court that Lim is devoid of any remorse.
Mr Wong said that all of the victims suffered great distress and he added that some of them were not well-off, holding only blue-collar jobs.
The court heard that Lim only managed a restitution of S$32,650, less than half the total amount he had taken.
-CNA/ac
