Was browsing thru Stomp earlier and came across this news article about how a Taka Jewellery employee actually took $1.1 million worth of shop's jewellery and cash to gamble.
Is it still too early to feel the negative impact from the Intergrated Resorts? Is the IR the better of the evil?
Kinda strikes a chord within me, especially since I know this Sales person when she served me.
Wong Siew Teng was working as a jewellery store supervisor when the urge to gamble took over her life for six months last year.
She made weekly trips to the casino at Resorts World Sentosa.
Sometimes, she would go twice a week. But she did not gamble with her own money.
She took diamonds and jewellery from her store, Taka Jewellery’s outlet in Kovan.
She ordered expensive jewellery from the chain’s other shops, lying to colleagues that she had interested buyers.
She took customers’ jewellery. She even took cash from the till.
She pawned the valuables and used the money to gamble.
When she won, she would redeem the pawned items and replace them in the shop.
However, her luck ran out, and her losses piled up. And when her employers discovered things amiss at the shop, the game was up.
Yesterday, the Malaysian was jailed for five years. In all, the petite 30-year-old pocketed jewellery and money worth $1.1 million.
She pleaded guilty last month to charges of criminal breach of trust and laundering criminal proceeds at the casino.
The items she took included loose diamonds, diamond rings, diamond ear studs and diamond bracelets – in fact, anything with diamonds.
She started taking the valuables in June last year. She pawned two diamond rings for $10,200 and headed for Sentosa.
She won at the casino, redeemed the items and replaced them in the shop. A week later, she took another diamond ring, and did the same.
However, her winning streak did not last, and she was soon over her head and unable to redeem the pawned jewellery.
The more she gambled, the greater were her losses. Then, last November, Taka went to the police over discrepancies in its Kovan sales records.
Investigations revealed how Wong trawled the chain’s database for jewellery with diamonds of at least one carat at the other branches.
She would ask for the items to be sent to Kovan, saying she had a potential customer, then pawned them.
When the branches needed their jewellery back, Wong took cash from the till to redeem them.
She also convinced customers to place cash deposits for pieces of jewellery, telling them these would be a good buy. In reality, the items had been pawned.
Between June and November last year, she took 109 items belonging to Taka or its clients and embezzled $64,000 in cash.
She pawned the jewellery at Big Max, Valuemax or Moneymax.
Police recovered about $774,000 worth of jewellery from the pawn shops and an inquiry will be held to find the rightful owners.
Defence counsel Sukdave Singh said Wong had acted out of character, saying she had been depressed after being jilted by her boyfriend.
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