SINGAPORE — After successfully siphoning customers’ payments to her employer a few times, Kamalasari Kamaludin grew emboldened and began embezzling money with her colleague’s help almost every day.

She and Sayeeda Nafisa Osman — who both worked at a motorcycle dealership — targeted at least 457 customers, misappropriating S$567,790 of their instalment payments.

They did this for more than a year before getting caught. 

Kamalasari, 36, was sentenced to four years and four months’ jail on Friday (Jan 29) after pleading guilty to two charges each of criminal breach of trust as a servant and transferring benefits from criminal conduct.

District Judge A Sangeetha considered another three similar charges during sentencing.

Sayeeda, 38, was sentenced to three years and 10 months’ jail last year.

The court heard that Kamalasari began working at motorcycle dealer Mah Pte Ltd from July 2003, while Sayeeda began working there a decade later.

Kamalasari was initially hired as a cashier but also worked in the firm’s legal department, helping to prepare documents against customers who defaulted on their instalments.

Sayeeda, meanwhile, collected the payments and had access to all of the firm’s computer systems. For every payment, she was meant to issue a receipt to the customer and file a copy of it by the end of the day.

Around September 2014, Sayeeda asked to borrow money from Kamalasari, but the other woman said she did not have any money to help her out.

They then hatched a plan to embezzle customers’ payments.

They did so by first collecting the cash. Sayeeda would issue them a manual receipt instead of keying the details into the firm’s computer system and generating a receipt from there. Then, she kept the cash and split it with Kamalasari.

After their actions went undetected the first few times, the pair began to take money almost every day.

Either woman would collect the cash and issue manual receipts, depending on who was available.

They did not keep a record of how much they misappropriated, spending the money on personal expenses such as food, beverages, petrol, leisure activities and on their families.

The duo pocketed about S$200,000 in the first year before ramping up their scheme, misappropriating about S$363,000 within the next two months.

Kamalasari deposited part of the cash in her three bank accounts.

She and Sayeeda were nabbed only in November 2015, when the firm’s finance manager checked on an overdue payment and found out that the customer had already paid up.

When the finance manager conducted a thorough check, he discovered what the duo was doing. He then lodged a police report on Nov 24, 2015.

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

For transferring benefits of criminal conduct, she could have been jailed up to 10 years or fined up to S$500,000, or both.