Former exec jailed for forging firm's cheques

Former exec jailed for forging firm's cheques

A FORMER executive of a freight-forwarding company, who forged company cheques amounting to almost $250,000 to cheat a bank, was jailed for two years and seven months yesterday.

Suffiyandi Shaiful Alfiah was an assistant general manager of Sin LCL Consol when he committed forgery for the purpose of cheating and abetting a former colleague in a conspiracy to commit forgery.

The 35-year-old pleaded guilty to 30 charges with 145 others taken into consideration.

The court heard that he paid back $5,000 out of the $185,000 he had received from 2010 to 2012. The company banks with United Overseas Bank.

The case against his alleged co-conspirator, Ahmad Zainol Asyikin Abdol Majid, is pending. Ahmad Zainol, 34, was an import assistant and responsible for accounting matters, including preparing cheques at Sin LCL. He left in 2010 after working in the company for two years.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Eunice Lim told the court that Suffiyandi had been working in the company since 2004. His last role in the company was as an assistant general manager and he was in charge of sales and operations. She said Suffiyandi took cheque books from the company's office cabinet and made them payable in cash or printed his name as the payee.

He also printed the dates and various amounts on the cheques. He forged the signatures of two authorised joint signatories to the company's cheques by looking at old documents with their signatures.

He cashed the cheques, or banked them into various accounts belonging to himself or his stepsister.

The total amount in the 30 offences and other acts of forgery he committed was $247,831. The company's director lodged a police report on July 4, 2012, about a month after he received a returned cheque. The two signatories whose signatures were purportedly on the cheque confirmed that they did not sign it.

Suffiyandi could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined on each charge.

elena@sph.com.sg


This article was first published on Mar 17, 2015.
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