SINGAPORE: An assistant sales manager of a company that sold construction materials submitted fake purchase orders to dupe it into releasing its products – metal sheets – worth nearly S$7 million in total.

Chinese national Lang Qian, who was working for Hock Seng Hoe Metal Company (HSH) at the time of her offences, then sold the metal sheets to other firms. Court documents did not disclose how much she earned by doing so.

HSH suffered the full extent of the losses as it did not receive any payment for the metal sheets it delivered because of her deception.

The 39-year-old Singapore permanent resident was sentenced to 9½ years’ jail on Thursday (May 22) after she pleaded guilty to seven counts of cheating involving metal sheets worth more than $5.5 million.

Twenty-one other charges, including those relating to the remaining metal sheets, were taken into consideration during her sentencing.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jordon Li told the court that Lang’s alleged accomplice was one Yu Xun, who was then the owner of a company called Century Construction and Engineering.

The court heard that Yu’s company had earlier bought metal sheets from HSH and he got to know Lang after liaising with her.

From November 2022, Lang embarked on a scheme to cheat HSH and submitted fake purchase orders to it.

The company processed the orders and was duped into releasing the metal sheets.

Between November 2022 and June 2023, she submitted 59 fake purchase orders purportedly from seven different companies.

After that, Lang sold the metal sheets to various undisclosed buyers.

DPP Li said: “In the course of selling the metal sheets that were dishonestly obtained from HSH, the accused would represent to potential buyers that Century was looking to sell its excess stock of metal sheets, or that she was acting on behalf of Century in selling the metal sheets.”

He added that Lang would then get Yu to issue fake invoices under Century’s letterhead to the buyers of the metal sheets.

She would also provide the details to be included in the fake invoices, including the buyers’ information and details of the items sold.

This misled the buyers into thinking they were buying metal sheets belonging to Century and made payments to it, the court heard.

The DPP added that after receiving the payments, Yu deducted 3 per cent from the ill-gotten gains as his commission before transferring the balance to bank accounts that Lang had provided.

Court documents did not state how the offences came to light or if Yu has been dealt with earlier.

For each count of cheating, an offender can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined. - The Straits Times/ANN