SINGAPORE — She was chased by loan sharks, and feared for her family’s safety, after taking responsibility for the loans of the son of an old friend who had died.

To get out of the tight spot, a supervisor of two Jurong coffee shops turned to pocketing more than S$33,000 in rental payments and cash proceeds she collected from stallholders.

For her misdeeds from September 2017 to January 2018, Chua Ah Gek, a 51-year-old Singaporean, was on Monday (June 24) sentenced to six months’ jail after she pleaded guilty to the offence of criminal breach of trust.

The court heard that Chua — who has worked for more than 20 years in the coffee-shop business — oversaw the two coffee shops at Block 134 Jurong Gateway Road and Block 491 Jurong West Ave 1, as an employee of Fu Chan F&B Group. She collected rental from individual stalls.

Chua took no loan herself but was harassed by loan sharks after she unwittingly became a guarantor for the son of her deceased friend, whom she knew as “Rong-zi”. She felt a debt of gratitude to help the son, as the deceased friend she knew as “Ah Xiang” helped her out before.

Her lawyer, Ms Tan Yew Cheng, said that the illegal moneylenders — who had her phone number — had threatened to turn up at her flat, which they could trace, if the money was not paid.

Alarmed for her family’s safety, she initially paid them out of her own pocket but as the demands continued, she then took the rental money she collected to pay the moneylenders on a few occasions.

Chua’s acts eventually caught the attention of her employer, who realised that the monies had not been deposited.

Despite Chua’s pleas for forgiveness, a partial restitution of S$17,944.80, and a note of confession she submitted on Jan 12 last year, the operation manager of Fu Chan F&B Group, Mr Tan See Ngee, 50, called the police.

During mitigation submissions, Ms Tan asked for three months’ jail for Chua, given that her client had felt obliged to help Rong-zi pay off his debt.

Chua, who would sometimes help with cashier duties and cleaning whenever there were not enough workers, had initially tried using her own savings of a few hundred dollars to repay the debt, but it was not enough, Ms Tan noted.

“Although this action of the accused is totally misguided, it came from good intention to repay a debt of gratitude owed to her old friend, Ah Xiang,” Ms Tan said. “The accused did not spend any of the ill-gotten money on herself.”

Ms Tan added that Chua and her family had wanted to make full restitution but did not have the means, pointing out that her husband, who suffers from poor health, had to rent out a room in their public housing flat to pay for household expenses.

After Chua was sentenced, Ms Tan submitted a request for her sentence to start after July 9 as she would have to take care of her three-year-old grandson. The boy's parents — Chua's 31-year-old son and his Thai wife — work in Thailand, and Chua's 24-year-old daughter is away on a business trip.

District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim accepted the application, and Chua will start serving her sentence on July 10 — a day after her daughter returns from her trip.

Chua remains out on bail of S$15,000.

For her conviction of misappropriating the monies, Chua could have been jailed up to 15 years and fined.