SINGAPORE: A 20-year-old woman was given four months' jail on Thursday (Jul 10) for pocketing more than S$38,000 (US$29,700) from a recycling firm.

She initially lied that she had taken the money to repay her father's debt, but later admitted that she had donated the cash to "Chinese idols" on the Douyin online streaming platform.

Malaysian Chew Yu En pleaded guilty to one count of dishonest misappropriation by an employee. A second charge of making false entries on payment vouchers was taken into consideration.

The court heard that Chew and her family lived in Malaysia before June 2024. Her only family member who lived in Singapore was her uncle, a permanent resident.

In June 2024, Chew began work as a clerk at Sin Le Heng Recycling, earning a monthly salary of S$2,300. She stayed in Singapore on a work permit, living with her boyfriend in a rented room, the prosecutor said.

Sin Le Heng bought materials for recycling from various customers. Those who wanted to sell items would go to the company's warehouse to have them weighed.

Warehouse staff would collect the items and issue a note specifying the weight and quantity.

The customer would then head to a counter to collect payment and receive a payment voucher issued by a clerk. After the customer signs the voucher, the clerk would pay the customer the amount in cash.

In her role as a clerk, Chew was entrusted with the company's petty cash, which was kept in a box at her counter in the office.

She would pay customers for the items they sold using the petty cash. If the petty cash was running low, she would inform her boss about it, and he would top it up by handing the money to her personally or placing it in the box after office hours.

Sometime before Dec 2, 2024, Chew's direct supervisor went overseas. This meant that Chew was often the only one in the office.

Over 42 occasions from Dec 2, 2024 and Jan 9, 2025, Chew took a total of S$38,315.30 in petty cash from the box.

She began with smaller amounts like S$198 and S$65.50 and increased this to over a thousand dollars. The largest single amount she took, according to court documents, was S$2,782.50 on Christmas Eve last year.

To evade detection, Chew wrote false payment vouchers detailing fictitious purchases and signed them herself before pocketing the corresponding cash amounts.

On two occasions, she did make payments to customers for genuine purchases, b...