SINGAPORE - A woman was working as an administrative clerk and accountant for the Hong San Temple Association when she forged multiple cheques to misappropriate more than $200,000 in total.
Chinese national Li FanFang, who gambled away all of her ill-gotten gains, had obtained the monies by fraudulently altering the payee portion of the cheques on 16 occasions between April 2019 and March 2020.
Feeling guilty, she wrote an apology letter coming clean with the temple staff on March 10, 2020, and fled to Hong Kong in a bid to evade arrest.
But Li, who has a three-year-old son and is married to a Singaporean, returned to Singapore days later on March 16, as she missed her family.
Following her husband’s advice, she surrendered to the police on March 25 that year.
Li, 32, was sentenced to three years’ jail on Thursday after she pleaded guilty to a forgery charge.
She had been entrusted with the temple’s cheque book while working for the place of worship in Defu Lane 12 near Hougang Avenue 3.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Chong Kee En said that the temple’s funds came from donations, and that signatures from officials such as the temple’s secretary and treasurer were needed to disburse cheques from its bank account.
The DPP said: “The accused had a gambling addiction. Some time in 2019, she decided to use the temple’s monies (to gamble). She recalled seeing a pen with erasable ink and was struck with the idea to use it to obtain the temple’s monies through the use of cheques.”
Li then bought such a pen to commit the offences.
From April 27, 2019, to March 10, 2020, she prepared cheques that were made payable to legitimate vendors or companies. The names of these payees were written using the pen.
After obtaining the necessary signatures, Li erased the names of the vendors and companies on the cheques and replaced them with her own name.
The ill-gotten gains were later disbursed into her own bank account.
DPP Chong said: “The accused gambled away all of (the monies) playing baccarat at the Marina Bay Sands casino. Although she felt guilty for stealing the monies, she continued to utilise the scheme... to defraud the temple... Records showed (that) she entered the casino on an almost daily basis during this time.”
He also told the court that the temple’s secretary and treasurer did not suspect anything as they trusted her.
On March 20, 2020, four days after her return from Hong Kong, she texted the temple’s secretary, saying that she was willing to pay back $1,000 per month and that the police could be alerted if she failed to keep her word.
The man lodged a police report later that day.
