Man Embezzled $21K From Restaurant To Save Lover’s Sick Daughter With Kidney Failure

How far would you go to save someone you love?

Would you put yourself in front of the gun and embezzle money like what this man had done here?

Lover’s Daughter Fell Sick 

It wasn’t the first time Maja Iskandaria Mohamed Juffri had seen his lover suffer through the agony of seeing her child fall sick.

In fact, her first daughter had died in 2016 from kidney failure. And unfortunately for the poor mother, her second daughter was diagnosed with kidney failure just this year.

Maja didn’t want to see his lover deal with another loss.

According to CNA, Maja said that they couldn’t save the first daughter because the hospital had demanded a certain payment that they could not fork out at 3am in the morning.

She passed on the following morning.

Maja and his lover aren’t married but they have a son together. Her two daughters were from her previous marriage and were not Maja’s biological children.

Afraid that she would go into depression which could affect his son, he felt obliged to help her with the situation.

Embezzled Money From Workplace 

Maja was the assistant manager at 1-Pavilion restaurant in Collyer Quay.

His job scope included collecting the restaurant’s daily cash proceeds and was tasked with keeping the money in the restaurant’s safe before depositing it into a bank account the next day.

Desperate to help his lover, he began taking money from the safe this year. Initially, Maja would return the amounts at the end of the month when he received his salary.

Lost Control Of His Finances 

It seemed like a good plan. It was as if he was just “borrowing” money from the restaurant without interest. After all, he was returning the amount that he had borrowed.

(Which, by the way, is wrong ah)

All was good. Until he started to take larger amounts from the safe and he was eventually unable to return the monies he had misappropriated.

Court documents showed that he took the money on 20 separate occasions, in amounts ranging from $23.50 to $5,469.50.

A total of $21,223 was misappropriated between 28 March to 19 April 2019.

The Italian restaurant’s finance department noticed that the daily sales proceeds in April had not been deposited for some time and the general manager confronted Maja, who admitted to his acts.

To date, he has returned about $760 of the $21,223 that he took.

“A Lot Of Other People Suffered Because Of My Stupidity”

Maja said that he committed the offence “without thinking twice”.

As he was playing hero to save a life, many people, including his sick mother and five-year-old son had to suffer. He pleaded with the judge to be lenient with his sentence.

Maja added on that his former employer from a different company has supported him by bailing him out and is willing to rehire him after his jail term.

Even though there was no real way to be certain of the accuracy of his plea, District Judge Carol Ling said that she was willing to take his word for it, but “that doesn’t condone what you have done”.

“The ends do not justify the means of how you have gone about doing it,” she said. “I think the prosecution’s sentence of nine months is more than fair.”

For criminal breach of trust by a servant, Maja could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.