LABUAN: A former hardware staff of an established hardware shop here today claimed trial in a magistrate’s court to committing criminal breach of trust (CBT) involving a total of RM86,010.
Trevor Gomes, 38, pleaded not guilty to the charge before magistrate Leona Dominic Mojiliu.
Gomes was alleged to have received the payments from the hardware shop’s customer and spent them for his own use.
The charge under Section 403 of the Penal Code carries imprisonment of not more than five years, whipping and fine upon conviction.
The offence took place between January 20, 2016 and March 14, 2019 at the hardware shop, Jalan Merdeka here.
According to the charge sheet, on March 25, 2019 the hardware company director found the hardware items stated on two invoice store bills did not tally with the cash sale bills number issued by the company.
The company’s management suspected the sold items stated on the invoices were written by the staff, namely Trevor Gomes.
The accused had confessed to having committed the offence by releasing items from the hardware store using the invoice store bills and faked the contents and sold them to customers at cheaper prices.
The company’s management then conducted thorough checks on all bills from 2016 to 2019 and found hundreds of invoices of the store bills did not tally with the cash sale bills issued by the company.
Based on the internal audit, it was found the company had incurred losses amounting to RM1,114,825.40 and lodged a police report on April 12, 2019.
The accused was arrested on Aug 8.
Prosecuting officer ASP Hasnan requested that the court imposed a bail of RM20,000 with two local sureties.
Magistrate Leona set bail at RM8,000 with two local sureties, and set Aug 22 for case mention. — Bernama
