SINGAPORE — When a clinic assistant discovered a flaw in her Yew Tee workplace’s point-of-sale system, she exploited it and began steadily siphoning off cash, being careful to cover her tracks.

About a year later, Sahrina Mohd Ghuas’ co-worker joined in after Sahrina taught her how to manipulate the system at the Temasek Medical Centre outlet.

Sahrina, 43, managed to take S$111,605 over more than two years before the duo were caught.

She was sentenced to one year and four months’ jail on Thursday (Sept 12), after pleading guilty to two counts of criminal breach of trust as a servant. Two other such charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

Her accomplice, Sim Swee Ching, 56, was jailed for one year and three months in June for her role in the scheme.

The court heard that Sahrina used the money she pocketed to pay for her family’s daily expenses. She has not made any restitution.

As a clinic assistant, she handled customers’ cash and payments, managed the point-of-sale system and attended to walk-in patients.

Court documents showed that she first began misappropriating money in May 2015, by taking patients’ cash.

She continued doing this until February 2017, taking S$58,408 in total.

In March 2017, Sim approached her and said she wanted to take money from the clinic too.

From then until Jan 31, 2018, they pocketed S$53,196 on numerous occasions, and split the money equally between them.

Both Sahrina and Sim admitted to committing the offences during their break times.

On Jan 5, 2018, the clinic’s doctor-in-charge told their chief financial officer that the electronic patient records had been tampered with.

After conducting an audit, the officer found discrepancies in the clinic’s daily cash sales from 2014 to Jan 4, 2018. She confronted Sahrina and Sim about this and they confessed to their crimes.

In mitigation, Sahrina’s lawyer Wee Hong Shern said that at the time, she had to support her entire family — including four children.

District Judge Luke Tan imposed the sentence sought by the prosecution, saying it “may well be considered to be on the low side”.

For criminal breach of trust as a servant, she could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.