SINGAPORE, Aug 14 — Tempted by the donations and membership fees she helped to collect, an administrative assistant of a temple pocketed S$38,799 (RM130,413) of the temple’s funds.

She used the money to pay for her groceries and restaurant meals, among other things.

Yesterday, Tham Lai Ying, 44, was sentenced to 10 months and two weeks’ jail.

She had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of criminal breach of trust. Two other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

What happened

According to court documents, Tham was an administrative assistant for Toa Payoh Seu Teck Sean Tong, a temple in Toa Payoh.

She would help collect donations and membership fees either in cash or cheque as part of her duties. For each sum she received, Tham would issue a receipt from a carbon copy receipt book, stating the amount and the purpose of the monies.

A duplicate copy of the receipt would be kept in the book, and Tham was to put the collected cash in a locked drawer in the temple. She had sole access to this drawer, stated court documents.

Once the receipt book was fully used, Tham would hand over the book with the duplicate receipts and the associated cash collected to the temple’s finance executive.

The finance executive would verity the amount collected against the receipts in the book, and hand Tham a new receipt book to continue her duties.

For this, Tham would receive a monthly salary of S$1,600.

Court documents stated that sometime in late May 2022, the temple’s finance executive realised Tham had not submitted some of the receipt books from March 2022 to May 2022.

An internal audit later revealed Tham had misappropriated S$38,799. The temple suspended her from her duties on June 4, 2022.

Of the S$38,799 Tham pocketed, S$1,000 was from membership fees. The rest was donations meant for charitable causes.

She had not submitted the utilised receipt books to avoid being caught.

"The accused did so out of greed upon seeing the large sums of cash collected,” court documents stated.

"She spent the misappropriated sum on her personal and household expenses, including groceries and meals at restaurants daily.”

When Tham was confronted, she admitted to her crimes and agreed to repay the misappropriated sum to the temple by instalments. However, she had not done so.

The secretary-general of the temple then made a police report on June 20, 2022, and Tham was arrested a week later.

Breach of public trust

Yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Lim Li Ting called for a sentence of 11 to 12 months’ jail.

She said Tham’s misappropriation was not a one-off incident, having taken place over three months.

The prosecutor added that Tham had also breached public trust as most of the money she misappropriated was donations meant for charity purposes.

Tham’s lawyer, Dhillon Surinder Singh of Dhillon & Panoo LLC, asked the court to take into account that she is unemployed as a result of the charges she faced.

Dhillon added that Tham wished to plead for leniency and mercy.

"Her husband is in court — that’s all she has, your honour — to lend some support and to plea on her behalf,” said the lawyer.

He sought a sentence of nine months’ jail, adding that since Tham was caught in 2022, she has not reoffended.

He also added that Tham had attempted to make restitution, but was unable to do as she is unemployed and had no financial means to do so.

For criminal breach of trust, Tham faced up to 15 years’ jail and a fine. — TODAY