Migrant domestic helpers are a common sight in Singapore, as many rely on them to get their households up and running.
While most of them work hard to earn a living, every now and then, there’ll be an errant case in which the helper betrays their employer’s trust.
For one elderly employer, it was the latter as she discovered her domestic helper was stealing from her and tried to pass it off as lottery winnings.
Source: Shin Min Daily News
The employer lodged a police report afterwards, and the helper is now set to serve a seven-month jail sentence.
The domestic helper started working for her 76-year-old employer, Madam Chen (surname transliterated from Chinese), in May 2019.
According to Shin Min Daily News, 41-year-old Faridah was hired to take care of Madam Chen’s bedridden husband, prepare meals, and help with housework.
For her work, she was paid S$700 a month.
In time, Faridah came to know that her employer kept her bank card in a safe above her wardrobe.
Source: Shin Min Daily News
Madam Chen would later give her account details to Faridah on a piece of paper, so the latter could help her withdraw funds.
From there, Faridah secretly took a picture of the account details and hid it for herself.
In March this year, Faridah decided to steal from Madam Chen by withdrawing money from her account.
During the first instance of theft, she made away with S$500 without arousing her employer’s suspicion.
With that first taste of ‘success’, Faridah became increasingly brazen as she withdrew funds illicitly on multiple occasions between 20 Mar and 8 Sep.
After each withdrawal, she would then put Madam Chen’s bank card back in the safe.
In total, Faridah ended up stealing S$12,000 from her employer.
On Madam Chen’s part, she did not notice anything amiss when she checked her account balance in March.
However, she observed that Faridah was constantly shopping for new clothes and accessories.
Source: Shin Min Daily News
The domestic helper would even purchase expensive ingredients like steak, and no longer wanted to eat the same food as Madam Chen’s family.
“She told me she won the lottery and treated me to a meal. I felt it was strange, but didn’t suspect anything at the time,” said Madam Chen.
Investigations later revealed that Faridah had also spent the money on mobile prepaid credit and lottery tickets.
Madam Chen was finally alerted to her helper’s wrongdoings when she tried to withdraw S$300 on 10 Sep.
When her transaction got declined, she was shocked to discover she only had S$244.65 left in her account.
She confronted Faridah, and the latter begged her not to lodge a police report, promising to pay off the debt if she let her continue working.
Initially, Madam Chen had decided against pursuing the matter further as she was aware Faridah was not financially well off.
However, she pressed on with the police report in the end at the advice of family members, who felt Faridah would repeat her actions once she ran out of money again.
Following the report, police came to arrest Faridah the next day.
According to Madam Chen, the stolen funds were allowance money given by her children.
Although the money was not for future funeral costs, it still pained her to lose it as she had saved it over the course of a few years.
She added that she initially had S$20,000 in her account and transferred S$15,000 into a joint account with her daughter for safekeeping.
At this time, Faridah has yet to make restitution to Madam Chen.
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Featured image adapted from Shin Min Daily News.
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