A Filipino accountant was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison on Tuesday for embezzling almost 4 million Singapore dollars (about P151 million) from the company he was working for in the city-state—then tried to persuade the judge to lower his sentence because he said he was sending 20 fellow Pinoys through college.
Ariel Biasong Salamanes, 42, pleaded guilty to 15 charges, including criminal breach of trust
and falsification of accounts, Channel News Asia and Coconuts Singapore reported.
Most of the money Salamanes stole was remitted back home to the Philippines—supposedly to fund the education of his “scholars”—while some was sent to the United Arab Emirates to pay off existing credit card debts from a period he had spent living there.
Salamanes, who used to work for data analytics firm QlikTech Singapore, was responsible for the company’s bookkeeping, accounts payable, and receivables from 2012 to 2017.
During his stint at QlikTech, he was given the power to sign checks, on his own, on behalf of the company—for payments as high as $10,000, Channel News Asia reported.
Salamanes has not paid back his former employer, but QlikTech has recovered $3.9 million through fraud insurance.
From April 2013 to June 2017, he signed a total of 451 checks and deposited the funds straight into his own bank account, before sending the money overseas. He then covered up his embezzlement by instructing other employees to make fraudulent entries in the company’s accounting system.
Overall, Salamanes made 835 remittances in 241 days to the Philippines and the UAE, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Cheng Yuxi.
Most of the money sent to the Philippines was deposited into bank accounts belonging to Salamanes, his boyfriend, and various family members, but the accountant reportedly kept approximately $408,000 in Singapore for his personal use.
According to Singapore authorities, the money remitted to the Philippines was used to buy condominium units, as well as put into investments under multilevel marketing schemes and stocks.
Salamanes’ white-collar heist ended, Coconuts reported, when he was caught by the Commercial Affairs Department of the Singapore Police in June 2017.
QlikTech also conducted its own internal investigation and reported the Filipino to the police when they discovered his embezzlement scheme.
At his trial, Salamanes asked the judge to give him a lighter sentence, but District Judge Ong Luan Tze was having none of his Robin Hood altruism.
“The point is that the money was not yours to give away, to begin with,” Ong told him during the sentencing, according to Today Online.
Salamanes’ lawyer Christine Sekhon, as part of his defense, also told the court that her client was suffering from depression that was allegedly triggered by a breakup with a long-time partner during the period in which he committed the crimes, The New Paper reported.
“My client felt he performed heroic acts helping people through [a] crisis… and rationalized that the company was profitable… He rationalized that other people needed the money more, and derived self-worth from these acts which he now accepts was misguided,” Sekhon said.
Judge Ong said that while she has “some sympathy” for Salamanes’ personal problems, they’re also not “an excuse to go around committing crimes.”