Z
Zhao Yun
Guest
Jul 11, 2011
Immigration officer jailed for taking cashcards
By Khushwant Singh
An immigration sergeant at the Woodlands Checkpoint would swap the cashcards of motorists leaving Singapore with cards that had no money stored in them. Within two months last year, Edmund Jeghan Anthony, 31, pocketed $2,226. -- ST PHOTO: ALBERT SIM
AN IMMIGRATION sergeant at the Woodlands Checkpoint would swap the cashcards of motorists leaving Singapore with cards that had no money stored in them. Within two months last year, Edmund Jeghan Anthony, 31, pocketed $2,226.
He pleaded guilty on Monday to committing criminal breach of trust and dishonestly converting the money stored in the 130 cashcards, found with him, for his own use. He was jailed for nine months.
A district court heard that Anthony would man an immigration booth at the Woodlands Checkpoint. Besides getting passports checked, each motorist would have to slot a cashcard into the reader to pay a toll. But when Mr Vincent Ma Yekai, 29, drove up at 7.45pm on April 4 last year, the reader at the booth was faulty.
Anthony took the cashcard over to the next booth for the toll to be deducted. After finding out that there was $90 remaining on the card, he returned another card with a similar design but with no value. Upon his return to Singapore, Mr Ma discovered he could not use the cashcard to make payments.
He obtained the cashcard's transaction record and discovered it could be not be his. He had bought his on March 27 but the record showed that the cashcard he had with him had been emptied of all cash the next day.
Mr Ma reported the matter and when confronted by the checkpoint's assistant commander, Anthony confessed. Investigations then uncovered the 130 cashcards in his locker and home and that he had misappropriated the money stored in them.
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