Advertisement

Supervisor of childcare centre jailed 23 months for embezzling nearly $80,000

Woman in handcuffs
Woman in handcuffs. (PHOTO: Getty Images)

SINGAPORE — A childcare centre supervisor, who was under investigation for embezzling money from a centre she formerly worked at, joined another childcare centre and committed the same offence.

Nuruljannah Ahmad’s later offences were uncovered after her employer read about her past crimes in newspapers and started an audit on the accounts. By then, Nuruljannah, a supervisor overseeing Star Learners childcare centre at Compassvale Bow, had pocketed nearly $80,000.

On Tuesday (29 June), Nuruljannah, 34, was sentenced to one year and 11 months' jail after earlier pleading guilty to two counts of criminal breach of trust by employees. She had managed to misappropriate nearly $80,000 in school fees paid by parents whose children attended Star Learners.

The prosecution sought at least two years’ jail for Nuruljannah, who appeared in court pregnant with her second child, as she had abused her position of trust reposed in her.

Misappropriated cash, omitted to record collections

Nuruljannah was hired as a supervisor of Star Learners in December 2014, after she left her previous employment.

Her job included collecting payment made by parents of the centre’s students. She would bring these payments, paid in cash or cheque, home for safekeeping.

Once a month, the director of the company that operated Star Learners would visit the centre to collect the cash and cheques from Nuruljannah, who would also submit a cash and cheque summary (CCS) which set out the collections for the month.

Nuruljannah also had to sign against separate payment records, and the director would check the cash collected against the records.

From 4 January 2015, Nuruljannah misappropriated cash and omitted to record the collections in the CCS. As a result, the CCS she submitted to the director tallied with the amount of money she handed over.

She would also not register new students in the centre’s system and misappropriated the money used for registration.

In total, she misappropriated $78,423 between 4 January 2015 and 5 February 2016. She used the money for her personal expenses and only made a restitution of $5,434.

Embezzled from previous company

Nuruljannah committed the offences while she was under investigation for misappropriating monies while she worked as a vice-principal for Kinderland Childcare Centre in 2014. She had embezzled $9,664 from January to May 2014 and used the money for her personal expenses.

A police report was filed on 20 June 2014. Nuruljannah pleaded guilty to her charges on 5 February 2016 and was fined $10,000.

The company director of Star Learners read about her conviction in newspapers and began an audit of Star Learner’s accounts, whereby the offences were revealed.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore

More Singapore stories:

2 men sentenced in fight at Bedok North over staring incident

Man who sexually abused girlfriend's 2 daughters jailed 23 years

Singapore detects 14 new COVID-19 cases; 12 in community