Woman guilty of embezzling $7m from spirits firm
A former relationship manager at a wine and spirits company has been convicted of embezzling more than S$7 million from her previous employer.
A woman has been sentenced to seven years in prison for misappropriating more than S$7m from the wine and spirits company she used to work for
Luciana Lim Ying Ying, 43, was handed a seven-year prison sentence and also fined S$30,000 on Monday, according to reports by Channel News Asia.
A total of 14,698 bottles of wine and spirits worth S$7,021,224.14 were misappropriated over the course of one-and-a-half years.
According to reports, Lim used the money to repay loan sharks after an ex-colleague defaulted on his payment for which Lim had acted as a guarantor.
She was allegedly threatened and harassed by loan sharks who claimed they had surveillance watching her five children and her mother.
Lim then started making fraudulent orders for expensive wine and spirits from her employer Hock Tong Bee Pte Ltd., which she then went on to sell to clients and used part of the money to repay the loan.
In March 2013, a manager at Hock Tong Bee filed a police report that the company was owed vast amounts of money from several customers Lim was serving.
Three days later, Lim surrendered to the police and confessed what she had been doing.
Furthermore, she was also found guilty of assisting in unlicensed money lending by permitting her bank account to be used by a loan shark.
The prosecution has sought a 13-year prison sentence for Lim due to several issues including the “staggering loss” to Hock Tong Bee.
Lim’s lawyers told the court she “felt guilt-ridden and had intended to surrender once she managed to satisfy the demands of the loan sharks and after the harassment had abated”.
The added the relationship manager had stood as guarantor for her ex-colleague as a result of her “trusting nature and willingness to help others in need” and she was “not motivated by greed or self gain” but was under” significant pressure…and had acted in folly and from a general feeling of helplessness.”
The prosecution and defence have both appealed against the sentence.
