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Man pocketed firm's $39,700 to pay for HDB flat and rented shophouse
24 May 2011
SOURCE: The Straits Times
A FORMER accounts assistant at a rock climbing shop was jailed for nine months yesterday for pocketing $39,663 of his firm’s money.
Oswald Ong Thomas was supposed to deposit the takings in the company’s bank account.
Instead, he used it to pay part of the arrears on his HDB flat and to fund the deposit for a rented shophouse in Chinatown.
He was caught after a director of Climb Asia on Tessensohn Road discovered in May last year that the company safe was empty, Deputy Public Prosecutor Amardeep Singh told the court.
Thomas, 33, claimed he had deposited the cash into the firm’s OCBC account.
When this turned out to be untrue, the director lodged a police report.
Thomas pleaded guilty to criminal breach of trust as a servant.
He has not paid any of the money back.
His lawyer, Mr Chen Chee Yen, said his client, who has hearing problems, had been facing financial pressures which caused his lapse of judgment.
He planned to use the shophouse in Chinatown for his own business, but it never took off and he lost his deposit.
Mr Chen said his client was born a female called Salina Saleh. An orphan, Salina suffered from gender identity disorder. Sufferers can feel like a woman trapped in man’s body, or vice versa.
In 2007, the accused underwent gender reassignment treatment and surgery to become a man.
Thomas, now a food stall assistant, could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.
