Supervisor cheated boss by inflating payment claims

Supervisor cheated boss by inflating payment claims

A concrete pump supervisor who cheated his employer out of more than $100,000 was jailed for two years yesterday.

Liang Lip Chieng , 49, inflated the claims for concrete pumped by his workers at the end of each month before handing the forms to his superior for approval.

His boss did not realise that the forms contained only Liang's signature and not the signatures of the respective operators.

Liang told the operators - who were foreigners and did not dare to question him - that the company had overpaid them, and collected the excess money from them.

He would then spend the money on gambling or paying off his gambling debts.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Francis Zhang Zeyi said the scam was discovered in mid-2013, after Liang had left G&W Ready-Mix in Sungei Kadut Drive.

The company's executive director had stumbled upon some of the inflated tariff claim forms containing only Liang's signature.

As Liang had left the company by then, the human resources department checked all the claims supposedly verified by him.

It discovered that his misdeeds dated from January 2011 to May 2013. The company lodged a police report in December 2013.

Liang pleaded guilty to 65 charges of cheating and one under the Moneylenders Act.

His punishment for the latter was three months' jail and the minimum $30,000 fine.

He had helped an illegal moneylender perform fund transfers using his ATM card in 2013.

Another 341 charges were taken into consideration.

Liang did not make any restitution. For cheating, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years and given a fine.

The maximum penalty under the Moneylenders Act is a $300,000 fine and four years' jail.


This article was first published on August 5, 2015.
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