SINGAPORE - A former sales manager who misappropriated sales payments amounting to $139,357 was sentenced to 26 months' jail on Monday (Oct 2).
Foo Ze Yenn, 38, admitted to criminal breach of trust when he was working at Goldcard between Feb 26 and April 6 last year.
Goldcard sold SIM cards and top-up cards to mobile phone retailers and at road shows.
Foo's duties included selling such cards to mobile phone retailers, and issuing sales orders and invoices to the retailers, who would pay him in cash.
For road shows, retailers would be issued mobile phones for sale. These were preloaded with SIM cards by Goldcard.
After the road show, Foo would collect sales payments from these retailers for the SIM cards.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Tow Chew Chi said Foo dishonestly misappropriated sales payments to boost his sales records.
From May 2014, he gave unauthorised discounts of up to 40 cents a card to retailers, to encourage them to buy more cards from the company.
This resulted in shortfalls in cash payments collected. Foo then used subsequent payments to cover up these shortfalls.
This continued for many months and his offence remained undetected.
From December 2015, he was no longer able to continue covering up the shortfalls.
Between Feb 26 and April 6 last year, he misappropriated the discounted sales payments relating to 29 invoices to cover up the shortfalls totalling $128,927.
DPP Tow said that, separately, around March last year, retailer Jonathan Koh handed $10,430 to Foo to buy SIM cards from the company.
Instead of handing this sum to Goldcard, Foo used the amount to cover up the shortfalls. No delivery order was created by him, and no goods were delivered to Mr Koh.
The total sum he misappropriated came up to $139,357. No restitution has been made.
Foo's lawyer Thangavelu said his client did not enrich himself but merely wanted to boost sales of the company because of stiff competition.
Unlike other cases, he said, this case was unique: It was one where a client exercised his discretion and it went wrong.
Foo was allowed to start his sentence on Nov 6 to settle personal affairs.
He could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined for criminal breach of trust as a servant.
