SINGAPORE - An administrative clerk used erasable ink to forge 14 of her employer's cheques and deposit them into her bank account.

Seah Yuh Lih, 46, would write the names of genuine payees which she later scrubbed out and replaced with her own, helping her to illegally obtain more than $500,000 in cash.

But her offences proved impossible to delete on Wednesday (Jan 31) as she was jailed for four years and two months, after pleading guilty to five forgery charges and one count of dealing with the benefits of her criminal conduct.

Sixteen other charges including nine additional counts of forgery were considered during sentencing.

The court heard that Seah's duties at the Singapore branch of the Toyo Engineering Corporation included managing company accounts and preparing cheques for payments to its suppliers.

Between July 2015 and March 2016, she would write the payees' names on the cheques with erasable ink before getting the firm's business manager to sign them.

She exchanged more than $223,000 of her ill-gotten gains for chips at Marina Bay Sands casino.

On May 5, 2016, an accountant from her company's Japan office told the business manager that a recent audit revealed discrepancies between the firm's bank account and its statements.

Further checks revealed that Seah was the payee on 14 cheques.

Seah, who was unrepresented, pleaded for leniency and asked if she could start serving her sentence after Chinese New Year.

She also told the court that she wants to spend time with her elderly parents.

Seah was ordered to surrender herself at the State Courts on Feb 19 and was offered bail of $15,000.

For each count of forgery, she could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.