Singapore jails woman who used boss’s credit card to go on US$26,000 shopping spree

Jocelyn Lee Sock Hui, 28, was sentenced to 15 months’ jail on Tuesday after she pleaded guilty to one count of cheating and one count of committing criminal breach of trust.

Two other similar cheating charges and one charge of forgery were also taken into consideration during sentencing.

The court heard that Lee started working as an administrative assistant to a director at Hai-Ou, a company that sells medical, professional, scientific and precision equipment, in 2014.

Lee’s role included assisting with paperwork and she was entrusted with the director’s credit card and online banking details to make payments as well as print out bank statements.

Sometime before March 2020, Lee started to become increasingly resentful of her boss as she felt unappreciated as an employee.

She then decided to use her boss’ credit card details to purchase items for herself through online platforms, said Deputy Public Prosecutor R Arvindren.

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Lee also accessed her employer’s bank account to make payments for the amount that she incurred on her boss’ credit card and for her own credit card bills.

On 77 occasions between March 5 and August 5, 2020, Lee used the Shopee e-commerce platform to buy numerous items using her employer’s Standard Chartered credit card, which amounted to a total of S$29,246.45.

Lee also made seven transactions through Lazada which amounted to S$6,700.70, and spent S$449 on products from local cosmetics company Roxie Design Lab – these were the subjects of the two cheating charges taken into consideration.

Altogether, she used the credit card to spurge a total of S$36,396.15 on herself.

Between March 30 and July 29 in 2020, Lee used her employer’s Standard Chartered bank account to make payment for credit card bills, amounting to a total of S$22,821.73.

To prevent her boss from detecting the unauthorised transactions, Lee covered them up with paper and photocopied the bank statements before handing them over to him.

Lee has since left the job and made restitution payments of S$22,000 to her former employer.

Prosecutors sought 17 to 20 months’ jail for Lee, arguing that the offences were serious given the large sums involved and constituted an abuse of trust.

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Defence counsel Wasiur Rehman called for a 15 months’ jail sentence instead in his mitigation plea for his client.

Rehman said that this was Lee’s first job and she had been rather naive when things turned sour after she made small mistakes that were met with negative feedback from her boss.

Rehman did note, however, that his client’s response to her boss was wrong.

For committing criminal breach of trust, Lee could have been jailed up to 15 years and fined. For each cheating charge, she could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.