Accounts manager jailed for cheating software firm of almost $800k
To help pay off debts incurred from online football betting, the accounts manager at American software company Autodesk embezzled so much money that it impacted the company's globally reported earnings, a district court heard yesterday.
Submitting false and inflated travel claims over five years, Tan Nyuk Hong, 45, cheated the company out of almost $800,000, which she used on more bets, personal expenses and to repay legal and illegal moneylenders.
Pleading guilty to three counts of cheating, Tan was jailed for four years, with another two cheating charges taken into consideration.
The court heard Tan started working at Autodesk from 2011 as a senior accounts payable analyst and her job was to process all types of American invoices.
She had access to the company's financial accounting software system and could process all types of codes within it.
Tan started betting on football online five to six years ago.
In 2014, she found some claims erroneously made under her name. There was a code used to process these claims and Tan started to submit false claims for airfares using the code on an almost weekly basis.
She ensured the reimbursement amount was less than US$1,000 (S$1,350) each time as she felt anything below that would not be singled out for audit. She also inflated her own legitimate claims.
Tan who was promoted in 2016, and again last year, to accounts payable global manager, continued to make fake claims after finding a loophole in the system.
But the company conducted an internal audit last year and discovered she was involved in a number of discrepancies. The company later made a police report.
No restitution has been made and Autodesk had to devote significant internal resources to investigate the matter.
Numerous business organisations were also impacted as a result, Deputy Public Prosecutor Soh Weiqi told District Judge Carol Ling Feng Yong.
In his mitigation plea, defence counsel Joshua Tong said Tan's modus operandi was relatively amateurish and not a result of meticulous planning.
He asked for no more than three years' jail.
The judge agreed to defer Tan's sentence to allow her to spend time with her family over the holidays. Out on $40,000 bail, she must surrender to the courts on Jan 6.
An Autodesk spokesman confirmed that Tan is no longer an employee. For each count of cheating, she could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined.
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