After her company turned down her request for a loan to pay for the hospitalisation for her father who suffered a stroke in Malaysia, Chong Lee Choo, 47, an accountant, forged a cheque for $21,054. She then withdrew the money, resigned from the company and helped settle her father's bills.
This all happened in December 2011. Her father died last year and on Thursday, Chong, a Malaysian national and a permanent resident here, was jailed for four months for committing forgery.
She was an accountant for TechKinetics, which distributes technology solutions to sectors such as telecommunications and industrial automation, when she resigned on Dec 15, 2011. Two months later, the company's management discovered that she had forged the cheque.
She had put her name down in the cheque as the recipient, wrote Dec 14, 2011, as the date and the sum of $21,054. She then replicated the signature of company director Wong Keng Chong, the sole signatory for TechKinetics' cheques.
Chong told District Judge Lee Poh Choo that she had no siblings who could help her in settling her father's medical expenses as she was an only child.
The prosecution had asked for a jail term of six months but the judge mentioned whether Chong's offence could have been "an act of desperation" before sentencing her to four months in jail.
She could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
