Woman Misappropriated $1.4 Million from Charity Sentenced to 6 Years 7 Months’ Jail

Forget Chendol, Chicken Rice, or Prata, nothing is as satisfying as a bowl of steaming hot Karma.

When someone commits a misdeed, especially one against the less privileged, we want them to be punished for it for the sake of deterrence and retribution.

But sometimes, in addition to legal repercussions, these offenders could get their comeuppance in other ways, such as in their personal life.

One woman who stole from a charity recently, for example, later lost most of the stolen money in a love scam.

Woman Misappropriated $1.4 Million from Charity

Our story’s antagonist is Aggiss Tan Shu Han, a 36-year-old who used to work as a finance and administrative assistant at a registered charity, The International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Asia Pacific.

Her job entailed making bank transfers for purposes such as payments to suppliers, among other things.

In March 2019, Tan was given an iBanking token for the charity’s Standard Chartered Bank account by her colleague, Mr Syn.

She was told to use it to make fund transfers between the account and the organisation’s other bank accounts.

You can see where this is going.

After the transactions were completed, Tan was supposed to return the token, but said she had forgotten to bring it whenever Mr Syn had asked for it back.

With this token in hand, Tan hatched an idea to instantly become rich.

The first step was to log into the charity’s DBS Bank account and submit a fund transfer request to the Standard Chartered one.

Next, she would e-mail the three signatories of the DBS account to have them approve the transfer.

Of course, those who approved the transfer believed it was purely meant to be an intra-company transfer.

But she would then use the token to transfer funds from the Standard Chartered account to other, personal accounts. 

In total, the 36-year-old made 133 unauthorised transfers from the Standard Chartered account, misappropriating about S$1 million in total.

She also took around S$454,000 from another bank account belonging to the charity.

Okay, now for the karma part.

Lost Nearly $800,000 in a Love Scam

While she spent nearly S$200,000 on luxury goods and to pay off debts, it turns out that she lost S$797,000 in a love scam.

Around the time of the offences, Tan had met a man called Fred Cheong on an online dating app.

One day in 2019, after Tan had misappropriated the charity’s money, Cheong asked for a large fund transfer purportedly for the release of a parcel containing cash of US$800,000 (S$1,088,496), which he claimed to be detained by Malaysian authorities.

This, of course, was bullsh*t.

But Tan fell for the scam, and transferred S$797,000 to third parties under the instructions of Cheong, who she believed was her boyfriend.

Her offences only came to light in June that year, when Mr Syn grew worried after she repeatedly failed to return the device.

He then called Standard Chartered Bank to check on the status of the bank account, and Tan’s misdeeds were uncovered.

Tried to Cover Up Other Offences After Arrest

After stealing from a charity, you’d think that someone would own up to their mistakes and accept their punishment.

But Tan didn’t exactly do that.

On 20 June 2019, the 36-year-old was remanded at the Police Cantonment Complex.

On compassionate grounds, she was allowed to use her phone to make childcare arrangements for her daughter.

However, she abused this act of leniency by warning a recipient of the misappropriated monies, Ms Liew Chwee Jen, about her arrest and instructed her to lie to the police.

The message, which was sent on WhatsApp, was then deleted from her phone. It said: “If anyone ask I transfer u money juz (sic) say I lend from u dun say is rental”.

Tan wanted Ms Liew to lie to hide the fact that she was paying rental fees to Ms Liew for a unit where she had kept gold jewellery and luxury bags.

Ms Liew actually followed Tan’s instructions in her first statement to police, as she lied to officers.

She did admit in a subsequent statement that Tan was indeed paying rental fees to her, but this was only after Tan’s message was found on her phone.

Sentenced to 6 Years & 7 Months’ Jail

For her crimes, Tan was sentenced yesterday (28 July) to imprisonment for six years and seven months.

She pleaded guilty earlier to one charge each of criminal breach of trust, obstructing the course of justice, and giving false information to a public officer.

Three other similar charges were taken into consideration.

Tan has not made any restitution, and the police have only managed to recover S$225,210.92 in cash and seized luxury goods.

This means that the charity lost a total of S$1,237,182.38 in the scam, money that may never find its way back to those who need it most.

Interested in more love scams? Watch the story here:

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