Whenever you come across something that does not belong to you, what do you do?
While most of us choose to do the right thing and return the item to its rightful owner, some get blinded by the value of the item and choose to take it for themselves instead. And of course, there are consequences when such things happen.
26-year-old Kaushalia Kathiravan was fined S$5,000 on Wednesday, 21 July, after she was found to have misappropriated a Cartier watch worth that amount. She pleaded guilty in a district court to one count of criminal breach of trust and has made full restitution since the crime.
What Happened
On 1 July 2019, Tan King Way, a Grab driver, noticed a Cartier paper bag in his car. He opened it to find a pouch carrying a Cartier Tank Francaise watch valued at S$5,150. He quickly reported the loss and passed it over to the Grab found property office at 28 Sin Ming Lane.
Kaushalia was working temporarily for Grab, and on 6 August, she, along with Ms Charmaine Ang who was working as a partner experience associate, was assigned to manage the office. They were tasked to repack lost-and-found property that had not been claimed for over a month.
As the two of them sorted through items on a table, Kaushalia noticed the Cartier paper bag. She quickly and quietly took the watch before placing the empty pouch back into the bag without Ms Ang noticing.
At about 5:08pm, which was just a few minutes after she had done the deed, she told Ms Ang that there was no Cartier watch in the pouch even though Grab’s found records said that there was.
She had no reason to suspect her partner, Kaushalia, so she went ahead and amended Grab’s records to state that the watch had not been found.
Offence Unnoticed Until Following Month
Kaushalia’s deed went unnoticed until the following month when some other Grab employees went through the office’s closed-circuit television footage to find out what happened to some missing cash that was previously stored there.
Grab’s public liaison officer immediately filed a police report on 6 September 2019 for the missing Cartier watch.
Kaushalia could have been sentenced to a jail term of seven years and fined for criminal breach of trust.
Don’t Let Greed Blind You
And so the lesson to be learned from this is, don’t let greed blind you.
When you allow greed to tempt you into doing the wrong thing, you can end up paying an even higher price for the item you took.
A 61-year-old security guard at Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) thought no one was looking and took a student’s Chromebook laptop home instead of reporting it to the lost-and-found.
As the Chromebook was issued by the school, it came with a software called Goguardian. This software eventually led the school to track the laptop to the security guard’s residence, and hand him over to the authorities for his dishonesty and theft.
He ended up being fined S$1,200 as well.
Featured Image: Facebook (Meanwatch)
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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