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Employee pleads guilty to cheating S$500k from condo's bank account
By Mustafa Shafawi | Posted: 13 May 2010 1704 hrs
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SINGAPORE: A former employee of a real estate company has pleaded guilty to forging signatures to draw more than half a million dollars from the bank accounts of a condominium management committee. 31-year-old Chew Swee Siong pleaded guilty to 28 charges. Another 158 were taken into consideration. He committed the offences over an eight-month period, between 18 November 2006 and 10 July 2007, while he was an employee of Kenwood Property Consultants.
In total however, Chew told police that he siphoned off about S$1.5 million from the condominium over 18 months. Chew was then based at West Bay Condominium at West Coast Crescent to manage its affairs. He had forged the signatures of two people. They are Baey Yam Chye, the ex-chairman of the Management Corporation Strata Title of West Bay Condominium, and Yeoh Kiat Boon, its treasurer.
Both of them are the authorised signatories of a bank account with OCBC and another with Citibank. He collected the money for his own use. The court heard that he surrendered to the police on 14 December 2007. In his mitigation, Chew's lawyer, Gregory Vijayendran, cited medical reports which said his client suffers from a mental disorder known as pathological gambling. Mr Vijayendran told District Judge Liew Thiam Leng that Chew has a "total loss of self control when it comes to gambling activities".
The lawyer asked for a lenient sentence as Chew had voluntarily surrendered to the police and cooperated with the authorities. Assistant Public Prosecutor, Kalidass Murugaiyan told the judge that he only received the written mitigation today and requested for an adjournment to study it. The case will be mentioned again on June 3.
- CNA/jy
