FOR nine months in 2005, a legal clerk created bogus transactions and siphoned $89,186 from her employer on 230 occasions.

Vani Sri Krishna Kumar, 33, said through her lawyer that it was her husband who asked her to cash out the cheques of Straits Law Practice between January and September that year.

Her husband, said her lawyer N. Kanagavijayan, had manipulated her meek and submissive character to pressure her to embezzle company funds.

He had also on numerous occasions physically and mentally abused her.

On Wednesday, District Judge Liew Thiam Leng jailed the unemployed woman 22 months on 20 charges of cheating, and took the remaining 210 charges into consideration.

She admitted last week to cheating Straits Law Practice director N. Sreenivasan into believing that the cheques of mainly $400 as deposits for a court bailiff to carry out writs of seizure and sale were genuine.

She was dismissed in September 2005 but had since paid back the company.

Assistant Public Prosecutor Ram Vishal Tiwary said discrepancies were discovered during a review of the company's accounts on Sept 26, 2005. A further probe revealed numerous fictitious payment vouchers and cheques prepared by her.

Mr Kanagavijayan said the husband's financial problems escalated in 2003 when he left his insurance job. He wiped out her personal savings within months.

The part-time property agent still drove a Mercedes Benz to show that he was successful in his business.

When his money problems got worse by end-2005, he harassed her for money, pressuring her to take money from her employer. Counsel said all the cheques she encashed were given to him.

When his hire-purchase company demanded payment of his $3,936 monthly arrears, he again pressured Vani to draw this amount which she did in July that year.

Vani, who has three children aged four to eight, could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined for each count of cheating.