SINGAPORE: An administrative assistant with a dance academy credited to herself almost 400,000 NTUC Linkpoints worth about S$4,000 (US$3,000).

She used the points to buy food, purchase handphones which she sold off, and paid off loans to unlicensed moneylenders.

Malaysian Liew Yu Er, 23, was sentenced to two weeks’ jail on Wednesday (May 3) after pleading guilty to one count of cheating.

Her employer, who was her bailor, made an impassioned plea for her in mitigation, saying she was young and otherwise a good worker.

The court heard that Liew worked at Dancepointe Academy, a business partner of NTUC Link. NTUC Link administers a customer loyalty programme, where those who sign up are rewarded with loyalty points known as Linkpoints when they buy from NTUC Link’s business partners.

Dancepointe Academy bought Linkpoints from NTUC Link at S$0.01 per Linkpoint. 

One of Liew’s responsibilities as an administrative assistant with Dancepointe Academy was to credit Linkpoints to customers who had made payments that qualified for the points.

Initially, Liew credited Linkpoints that customers did not redeem to her own card. However, she later began crediting Linkpoints to her card, even when there was no qualifying transaction by customers.

She credited a total of 391,854.34 Linkpoints to her card over 145 occasions from Aug 21, 2022 to Nov 15, 2022.

She used the points to buy food at NTUC FairPrice outlets and five handphones from the supermarket, which she sold for about S$1,200 in total.

On Nov 15, 2022, NTUC Fairprice sent an enquiry to an administration manager at NTUC Link to check on the number of Linkpoints belonging to Liew.

The manager found that Liew had almost 400,000 Linkpoints credited into her NTUC Plus! card in about three months. To accumulate this many points, a person would have to complete about S$290,000 worth of transactions.

The manager contacted Liew’s employer, owner of Dancepointe Academy Tang Ee Liang, about the suspicious transactions.

When Mr Tang confronted Liew, she admitted issuing Linkpoints to her card. She later agreed to a repayment scheme, where she would pay S$500 from her monthly salary to cover the loss incurred by Dancepointe Academy.

She has since had S$2,000 deducted.

The prosecutor asked for between two and three weeks’ jail for Liew. In mitigation, Liew initially said she was not aware that customers needed to make purchases to get the Linkpoints, and that she was not aware that what she did constituted an offence.

She said she needed to pay money to unlicensed moneylenders and was having “a hard time”, with little money for herself.

However, she later retracted this after being told that it amounted to qualifying her plea.

EMPLOYER ASKS FOR LENIENCY ON HER BEHALF

Liew’s employer Mr Tang, who was also her bailor, accompanied her to court and asked to speak on her behalf.

He told the court that Liew was “a very new employee” from Malaysia.

“She joined us last year. So in our training process, we will teach her how to use the equipment and tell her things like – when a customer buys something we give them points. But sometimes, like giving free vouchers, free discounts, it could have been interpreted that it’s something free in nature and doesn’t cost the company,” he said.

“I realise, in our training programme, such things should be emphasised going forward. As a small SME, we don’t do very regular audit, in other words when something like this can happen, temptation is there. By the time it materialises, it’s no longer an insignificant amount.”

Mr Tang said he felt this was an opportunity for the company to “do better” and said Liew was very young and new to Singapore.

The judge asked him how he felt in terms of Liew’s levels of integrity and honesty, and Mr Tang said: “I would say she has been conducting herself with a good level of integrity.”

He said she was doing her best in a new role at the time.

“I also got the knowledge that she was scammed by some unlicensed moneylender, but because of our company policy, we couldn’t provide the financial assistance she needed at that moment,” he said.

“When this unfortunate thing happened, we continued to hire her, we posted her to a different location where such a situation will not arise again. She has been performing her job well,” he said, asking the judge to give her a chance.

The judge said he had to balance the aggravating factors with the mitigating ones – taking into account the fact that she committed the offence over 145 occasions.