The Intermediate Court yesterday handed down six years' imprisonment to a bank employee who was found guilty of embezzling over half-a-million dollars and forging Deposit Certificates to cheat 29 bank customers into investing in fixed deposit schemes.

Senisah Fuziah binti Mohammad Adi Zainal, 32, a personal financial assistant at abank, had pleaded guilty last month to the 31 charges of taking $234,304.62 from her employer bank in Tutong District on multiple occasions between May 26 and December 22, 2009 and $335, 455 between January 4 and November 10, 2010.

The defendant also dealt directly with the 29 persons who were interested in investing their money in various types of fixed deposit schemes offered by her employer bank. DPP Suriana Radin had informed the court that investigation by the Commercial Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department of Royal Brunei Police Force showed that the defendant pocketed a total amount of $569,759.62 from 29 persons who had approached her for making investments from May 2009 to November 2010 and cheated the bank customers by forging the bank's Deposit Certificate issued to them.

It was in November 12, 2010 that the defendant's scam was unearthed when a customer went to the bank's Sengkurong branch to make additional deposits only to find out that no deposits had ever been made into her fixed deposit account.

An internal investigation led to the defendant's act being discovered and police investigations further revealed that the defendant had used all the money to buy luxuries in the form of gadgets and electronics for home, repair cars, bill payments, help fund family functions, lend some to family members, fund a food stall business and even pay for holidays in and out of the country.

While deciding the sentence, Intermediate Court Judge Pengiran Masni Pengiran Bahar considered the seriousness of the offences, the big amount involved in the case, the fact that the offence was only discovered when a customer complained, and saw that no restitution has been made by the defendant.

The court said that the defendant's entitlement to a discount in sentence to six years was due to her instant guilty plea and based on the case's totality principle.

Source:
@BRUDIRECT.COM

by BruDirect.com

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