SINGAPORE - A fast food restaurant manager who misappropriated $30,294 was jailed for four months on Tuesday.

Zhou San'Guo, 31, admitted to criminal breach of trust of the amount at McDonald's restaurant at Bukit Batok East Avenue 4 at about 1am on May 13 last year. He claimed to have taken the money to repay his debts.

A district court heard that he reported for night shift at about 5.30pm on May 12 last year.

He was given a float money of $6,000 and petty cash of $500 by the part-time floor manager who worked the previous shift.

The manager also placed the restaurant's daily sales earnings for the duration of her shift into the safe for Zhou to verify before he deposited them into the inner safe.

He withdrew the key to the safe when he started his shift. The inner safe key was always left in the safe and could only be opened by two keys.

At about 9pm, Zhou claimed that he received a call demanding that he repay debts he owed to illegal moneylenders. He then decided to take the cash in the safe and inner safe to pay off his debts.

Due to a blackout at about midnight, he told the other three staff that they could leave early. Before leaving, Zhou deposited the float money and petty cash into the safe, as well as the restaurant's daily sales earnings into the inner safe.

He returned to the premises about an hour later and opened the safe. When he tried to open the inner safe, he could not as he only had the restaurant's safe key and not the one kept by Certis Cisco officers. He then forced open the inner safe and misappropriated money totalling $30,294.

He left for Malaysia the same day and was arrested on Aug 15 last year at Woodlands checkpoint.

No restitution has been made.

He could have been jailed for up to seven years and/or fined for criminal breach of trust.