Accountant Managed to Embezzle About $4 Million & Send Most Back to the Philippines

By
George Yang
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Before you go apeshit and think that $4 million is enough for you to buy ten houses and a Lamborghini, think again: our favourite pastor Kong Hee managed to “embezzle” almost $50 million and he’s having chicken rice in a restaurant now.

So $4 million nothing lah. It can’t even clear honestbee’s debts.

But here’s the difference: while Kong Hee’s monies were transferred here and there to avoid detection, this man committed his crime in broad daylight…simply by signing multiple cheques to himself.

Here’s how it all conspired to this great heist.

Accountant Who Sign Too Many Cheques

Ariel Biasong Salamanes is a 42-year-old Filipino who worked as an accountant in QlikTech Singapore, an MNC that creates software for business intelligence and data visualization.

Salamanes is a certified public accountant, and he has access to the company’s cheque books for two bank accounts. In fact, he has more than access: he has the authority to sign singly on company cheques for payments of up to S$10,000.

And here’s the problem: the man decided to misuse the trust given to him.

Between April 2013 to June 2017, he signed off a total of 451 company cheques to get cash.

Why didn’t his colleagues got suspicious, you ask.

Salamanes instructed his colleagues to make false entries into the company’s electronic account system.

Here’s an example based on Goody Feed’s system, when someone wants to buy a burger for #FastFoodFriday:

  • BuffLord95 told XiaoBeach73 to insert $5,000 for a burger he’s getting for #FastFoodFriday into the company’s accounting system
  • BuffLord95 then prepares $5,000 for the burger using the company cheque book, most probably as cash cheque

Well, BuffLord95 would get $5,000, while XiaoBeach73 and the stupid boss would think that Goody Feed is reviewing a $5,000 burger.

But Salamanes doesn’t just keep the millions of dollars in his house. Nor did he use them to develop a singer’s career.

Remitted $3.57 Million Overseas

Salamanes remitted most of the money to the Philippines, and some of them to United Arab Emirates where he had some credit card debts.

Of the $3.57 million, he kept $1.69 million for his own use and $1.48 million for his boyfriend and family.

He also kept about $400K in Singapore.

There, total of $4 million le.

Tip-Off in June 2017

On 13 June 2017, the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) received information that Salamanes might have misappropriated funds from his company by depositing company cheques into his personal bank account.

Oh, someone sabo.

By then, his company was also conducting internal checks and upon finding out that they’ve been buying $5,000 burgers there could be frauds, they made a police report.

And tada: Salamanes was caught.

Depression, Kind Guy, Broke Up

As usual, the defence of Salamanes is almost like a template: the man had allegedly “gone through a traumatic break-up with a long-term partner”, did charity with some of the stolen money and had depression the end of 2014.

The reason why he had embezzled the funds?

It’s not for God.

It’s “to satisfy” his “craving to be accepted by others.”

Can I steal money from my company so that I’ll no longer be an outcast, too?

Salamanes will be sentenced today (25 September 2019), but given that Kong Hee is just jailed for 3.5 years, you can bet we’ve yet another millionaire in Singapore.

Because Salamanes had not made any restitution to QlikTech to date. Not even one cent.

Watch this for a complete summary of what REALLY happened to Qoo10, and why it's like a K-drama:

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]