SINGAPORE - An accounts assistant forged three cheques amounting to $3.6 million belonging to his employer and had intended to flee to Thailand for a "good life'', a district court heard Thursday afternoon.

Tan Yong Hai had persuaded his former schoolmate and good friend, Lau Tien Chen, to let him use his bank account to receive the ill-gotten money.

Here are some past cases of employees cheating their companies:

1. May 2015

A former legal secretary was found guilty of misappropriating $489,200 over seven years from her employer, AsiaLegal.

After obtaining proper authorisation of vouchers and signatures on cheques, Noriza Aziz, 44, would inflate the figures by altering numbers and words. She also destroyed original payment vouchers and falsified them to support the new amounts.

Between December 2006 and May 2013, Noriza committed a total of 209 offences.

For cheque forgery and falsifying accounts, she was sentenced to 40 months of jail.

2. January 2015

Zuo Jing, a management accountant, siphoned off more than $400,000 from her employer, sand importer Riverton Group.

The 31 year-old misappropriated signed cheques in order to fund a "lavish lifestyle", including a holiday to Europe.

Together with Ivan Lim Chin Ping, 30, Zuo committed criminal breach of trust, money laundering and cheating between late 2013 and January 2014.

The duo misappropriated signed company cheques intended for vendors, and would sometimes deceive signatories into signing cheques. Zuo would then cash these cheques over the bank counters.

Zuo was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail. Lim has been charged and the case against him is pending.

3. June 2014

A former private bank relationship manager was sentenced to 5 1/2 years jail for cheating his employer, private bank Clariden Leu, of $2.5 million between October 2009 and October 2011.

Yap Chee Yen, 36, made a series of unauthorised fund transfers from his clients' accounts by forging their signatures. This was done by cutting signatures from past records, and pasting them onto new fund transfer instructions.

He then pretended that he had checked with clients to confirm the transfers, even though he had not done so.

Yap also used his British Virgin Islands company, Threesixfive Capital, to receive the money and distance himself from the transfers.

The money was spent on personal expenses, including a vehicle and a luxury watch.

4. June 2013

Suzette Koh Mui Ting, 48, cheated her employer of more than $1.67 million over a period of 16 months with the help of her boyfriend, Ong Koon Beng, 47.

Koh worked at Stephan Machinary, and was the secretary of the firm's managing director, Mr Peter Reeg, 66.

The pair conspired to forge 102 cheques with amounts ranging from $1,290 to $74,200. Ong had used a portion of the money to gamble.

He then helped Koh go into hiding for 12 years, until she surrendered herself to the police on June 18, 2010.

The duo was sentenced to six years and six months of jail.

5. May 2013

Muhammed Syahmi Lopez, 23, was jailed six months for forging time sheets to cheat StarHub of more than $18,800.

The former customer service officer had been dismissed for tardiness in on June 15, 2011, but continued to claim a salary from his recruitment agency, Recruit Express.

In order to do so, Lopez forged the signature of Ms Ho Lei Kam, 33, the Starhub outlet manager.

The fraud was discovered only on February 3, 2012, when a staff member noticed he had billed StarHub for working on January 23, a public holiday.