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Ex-PUB technician jailed 3 years 9 months for cheating water agency of $2M

Mohamed Sa’ad Mohamed Ali pleaded guilty to 113 charges of cheating and two of using criminal proceeds. (Yahoo News Singapore file photo)
Mohamed Sa’ad Mohamed Ali pleaded guilty to 113 charges of cheating and two of using criminal proceeds. (Yahoo News Singapore file photo)

A 43-year-old man who cheated his former employer PUB of nearly $2 million was on Tuesday (27 November) jailed for 3 years and 9 months.

Mohamed Sa’ad Mohamed Ali, a technician at the national water agency, had initially claimed trial to 718 counts of aggravated cheating involving $1.9 million, and seven counts of using criminal proceeds.

But the father of five threw in the towel while under cross-examination and decided to plead guilty to 113 charges of cheating and two of using criminal proceeds. Each cheating charge involved $3,000.

Sa’ad was in charge of troubleshooting and maintaining mechanical equipment at Choa Chu Kang Waterworks. He was also in charge of carrying out the procurement of spare parts and equipment.

Between 2005 and 2012, Sa’ad used the small value purchase procurement process to cheat his employer. He was supposed to get three quotations and put a recommendation in a quotation form on which supplier to award a contract to. The practice would be to recommend the cheapest supplier to an approving officer.

But Sa’ad set up three sole proprietorships under his wife’s name, ensuring that contracts would be awarded to one of her companies. In total, he cheated PUB into awarding 718 contracts worth $1.9 million to the companies.

In August 2009, Sa’ad used criminal proceeds to buy a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo. He would not have been able to make two lump sum payments of $74,870 and $40,000 for the car had he not cheated his employer of the monies.

Among other things, Sa’ad used his criminal proceeds to buy an insurance policy valued at about $25,000 and to repay his HDB mortgage of about $163,000.

He was arrested on 23 August 2012 by anti-graft officers and admitted to his crimes. He sold off the car and gave the $92,000 in sale proceeds to the authorities as restitution. The bank accounts of the three companies registered in his wife’s name were also frozen with a total amount of $290,000.

For each of his cheating charges, Sa’ad could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined. For each of his charges for using criminal proceeds, he could have been fined up to $500,000 and jailed up to 7 years.

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