A BANK employee forged the signature of a client and bank documents after realising that a wrong account had been opened and the wrong unit trusts were bought.
Wendy Tan Law Ling, 29, was jailed for a total of three months on Wednesday after admitting to 11 charges of forgery.
She was working as a senior relationship manager with DBS Bank at the time of the offences in July last year.
Now a private tutor, she had forged the signature of Malaysian Gan Huey Fen on some letters relating to the purchase of 3.15 million units in Barclays Equity Selected Income Fund (ESIF).
The court heard that on July 2 last year, she travelled to Kuala Lumpur to meet Ms Gan and her friend, Ms Rebecca Tan Lay Lay.
Initially, Ms Gan had wanted to place $3 million into a fixed deposit account and another $3 million into the ESIF.
She had pre-signed several documents including a Unit Turst Cash Transaction form to buy the unit trusts.
A few days later, Tan received instructions from Ms Rebecca Tan to use $3 million to buy unit trusts and $2 million in a fixed deposit account.
On July 4, Tan realised her colleague had opened a savings instead of a current account. The next day, Ms Gan transferred $5 million into the account number given.
Two days later, Tan submitted the unit trust cash transaction form to the bank, showing $3 million worth of Barclays Asian Real Estate Income Fund (ARIEF) unit trusts had been bought instead of ESIF.
Subsequently, she rectified her mistake by forging Ms Gan's signature on bank documents.
Lawyer Rajah Retnam said his client was dismissed from the bank as a result and did not benefit from it.
District Judge John Ng said the charges were serious as they involved bank documents and they were committed by a bank officer in the course of her duties.
'The element of trust is vital in the banking sector and the accused had by your actions betrayed the trust of your employer and the trust of the customer of the bank,?' he told Tan.
