A salesman who pocketed cash payments totalling $105,148 from customers of his employer was jailed for 22 months on Friday.

Lim Hock Chuan, 52, was working in F & N Foods when he misappropriated the amount between January and September last year.

A district court heard that his duties included collecting money from companies and customers under his care to which F & N Foods had supplied food products to.

He was to hand over the money to the finance department of the company by the next working day.

Investigation showed that after he had collected from the customers, he would then use the following month's collected payments from each customer to cover for the previous month's payments by that same customer. He would dishonestly misappropriate the money collected from the previous month.

This continued until he was unable to pay for the amounts owed to the company for June to September as he had used all the money collected to pay off his own debts.

In total, he misappropriated money on 330 instances over nine months.

He could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.