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A FORMER part-time security officer was jailed 15 months on Tuesday for helping his senior colleague misappropriate assorted currencies belonging to a hotel and moving the money out of the country.
Gunaselan Dharmiah, 24, pleaded guilty to aiding Kumaran Subramaniam, 26, then an operational manager of Active Security & Investigation Services, to commit criminal breach of trust of an orange bag containing $83,584 entrusted by Grand Hyatt Hotel on July 30 this year.
He also admitted to removing the money from Singapore by converting the $83,584 to Malaysian currency in Johor Baru on July 31.
At the time, Active Security had a two-year contract with the Scotts Road hotel to collect cash and cheques and deposit them at Citibank at Orchard Road. Kumaran, whose case is pending, was assigned to the job with another security officer.
A district court heard that after Kumaran had collected the bag of cash from the hotel in his company car on July 30, he contacted and schemed with Gunaselan to misappropriate the money.
Gunaselan met Kumaran who handed him the bag of money along Handy Road. Kuamaran then called the police and lied that two unknown men had snatched the bag.
Gunaselan took the bag home and contacted his colleague, Rajan Mariappah, 19, who has since been jailed.
Both men went to Johor Baru where they converted $83,000 into RM170,000 at two different moneychangers. Gunaselan then took Rajan to a bank and banked in RM$50,000 into his girlfriend's account. He deposited the balance into a friend's account in MayBank.
Police recovered a total of about $64,000, including a cellphone.
Defence counsel Rakesh Vasu said his client was very remorseful and had committed the offence out of desperation to meet his family's financial problems.
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