Former asset management vice-president for UE ServiceCorp Singapore, Linda Lee, made personal gains totalling more than $5 million.ST PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW
Former vice-president jailed 14 years
for cheating offences involving more than $10 million
SINGAPORE - The former asset management vice-president for UE ServiceCorp Singapore, Linda Lee, was jailed for 14 years on Friday (Sept 8) over cheating offences involving more than $10 million.
The facilities management company is a subsidiary of United Engineers (UEL). Lee was terminated from her job in June 2015.
Lee, now 39, made personal gains totalling more than $5 million. She used some of the proceeds of her criminal activities to buy items such as multiple properties, luxury goods and a car.
On Friday, the court heard that only about $2.1 million could potentially be recovered.
Part of this amount is the $900,000 which was recovered by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau's seizure and recovery efforts.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jasmin Kaur told District Judge Tan Jen Tse that the amount which could potentially be recovered from the local properties Lee bought is about $1.2 million.
She added that the lawyers from Lee's former company are still in negotiations with banks and developers on the final amount.
Before handing out the sentence, Judge Tan said that
Lee should receive a "severe sentence", as her offences were serious and the amount involved was large.
On Aug 31, Lee pleaded guilty to 28 cheating charges and seven counts of converting the proceeds of her criminal activities by buying the big-ticket items.
Another 325 charges for similar offences were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Lee committed the offences between 2010 and 2015. According to court documents, she worked with four accomplices, whose cases are still pending.
Among her offences, Lee set up LT Engineering Consultancy in 2011 under the name of her unsuspecting father, Mr Lee Foo Wah.
She explained to him that the firm would be doing general works, when, in fact, her sole purpose for creating it was to siphon money from UEL.
Lee caused UEL to make payments to LT Engineering 25 times. The total amount paid was more than $1.7 million.
She also used false quotations to get UEL to pay for her own home renovations.
Lee, who had engaged the firm Pure Concept to work on her flat, created fictitious jobs in UEL's system, stating that work needed to be done at UE Square, which was developed by UEL.
By doing so, she caused UEL to make payment to Pure Concept on a total of 63 occasions, and the total amount it gave the renovation company was $220,000.
She also created fictitious jobs and submitted false quotations which were rigged for the jobs to be awarded to a construction firm known as Ying Xin Services.
After payment was made to Ying Xin Services, Tan Aik Gee, a manager with the firm and one of Lee's alleged accomplices, would keep half for himself and give the remainder to Lee.
She also used a similar method for jobs to be awarded to companies set up by another accomplice.
Offenders convicted of cheating can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined for each charge.
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Linda Lee pleaded guilty to cheating offences involving more than $10 million dollars, on Aug 31, 2017.ST PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW
Ex-VP jailed 14 years for part in cheating her company of $10 million
She was a high-flying executive who abused her position to cheat her company of $10 million over six years with four other persons.
Of the amount, Linda Lee, a 39-year-old Singaporean, took almost $5 million and splurged on private homes in Singapore and Batam, home renovations, valuables like watches and handbags, two insurance policies and a car.
Lee was sentenced to 14 years’ jail in the State Courts on Friday (8 September) after she pleaded guilty to 35 cheating charges last week. A total of 326 other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
According to court documents, Lee joined UE ServiceCorp Singapore, a subsidiary of public-listed United Engineers Limited (UEL) as an assistant manager in 2009. Over the next five years, she was promoted several times and eventually became Vice President (Asset Management) in 2014.
Some time in 2009, Lee was approached by a co-accused, Tan Aik Gee, a manager at Ying Xin Services, a general contractor that had previously provided its services to UEL. Lee and Tan came up with a scheme to cheat UEL.
Tan would provide Lee with letterheads of various contractors. Using the letterheads, Lee would prepare false quotations to submit for fake job requests in a system.
The job requests would be done for properties that had sufficient or extra allocated funds. Due to her position, she was the requester, the first approving officer and the person responsible for ensuring that a job was completed.
As Lee rose in position, she was given more responsibilities at the company and as such, the scale of the cheating got bigger.
Tan then roped in Wong Weng Kong in 2011, with Wong providing the letterhead for TW Construction Engineering. Wong also set up five other companies with his wife and daughter’s names in 2013 and 2014 so that Lee can award jobs to those companies too.
Lee also used her father’s name to set up LT Engineering Consultancy to siphon money from UEL in 2011. This, however, was done without the knowledge of her father and the other co-accused persons.
Two other accused persons, Ng Shun Jun and Tan Kiam Boon, were brought into the conspiracy to help Lee in creating false quotations in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Lee bought a dot-matrix printer for the purpose of creating fake invoices, and also made fake company stamps based on the letterheads in her possession.
The orders for the fake jobs ranged from $292,000 to $498,000. Wong would take 10 per cent of each job that involved his companies, while the rest would be equally split between Lee and Tan Aik Gee.
Lee also made UEL pay a total of $220,000 for her home renovation by creating fake jobs to be done at UE Square, which is owned by UEL. To ensure that renovation company Pure Concept could be given the jobs, she created a false quotation and two supporting fake quotations. After UEL issued a cheque for each job, Lee would collect the payment and hand it to Pure Concept.
To date, only $910,224.36 of the $10.1 million amount siphoned from UEL has been recovered, mostly from the sale of Lee’s luxury goods at a loss. The company is trying to recover a further $1.2 million from her.
According to a mitigation document previously submitted by Lee’s lawyers, Lee came from a humble family and had cooperated with the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB). In addition, Lee went to UEL’s internal auditors to admit to her misdeeds before she was called up by CPIB.
Lee also suffers from a mental disorder, which had caused her to indulge in compulsive purchases of luxury goods. Lee’s lawyers also claimed that UEL could have had a “higher standard of check and balance”.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Jasmin Kaur had pushed for a jail term of 14 years, given the astronomical sum involved in the cheating scheme.