A 21-year-old woman who stole her mother's bank card to help pay off her boyfriend's debts was yesterday sentenced to two months in jail.
Cindy Yap Qinhan will finish the term before completing a stint in the Drug Rehabilitation Centre that she was in the midst of serving.
As a guarantor for her then boyfriend - who owed money to loan sharks - she needed money to stop the illegal moneylenders harassing her at home.
She decided to raise the funds using her mother Yap Beng Yen's credit card, which she stole from a drawer in her mother's room.
After managing to guess her mother's PIN - the 39-year-old's birth date - she withdrew $7,400 from ATMs between Sept 15 and Sept 18 in 2012, then broke the credit card and threw it away.
Yesterday, Yap admitted to four offences she committed in the process of doing this, with another seven taken into consideration.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Terence Szetoh said the amount Yap stole was large, and had been withdrawn in a short period of time - over four days that September.
The DPP added that Yap had not made any restitution to her mother, who herself returned to the bank what her daughter had taken.
The maximum penalty for theft in dwelling is a jail term of seven years and a fine, while that for theft is a three-year term plus a fine.
