More jail time for former law firm clerk who misappropriated over $122,000

A former law firm conveyancing clerk who is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence will be spending an additional one year and four weeks behind bars for separate offences, including criminal breach of trust.

Sufandi Ahmad, 45, misappropriated three cheques amounting to more than $122,000 in total while he was working for the firm. For this and another offence, he pleaded guilty in December 2025 to one count each of criminal breach of trust and using a counterfeit stamp certificate in place of a genuine document about a property.

Details about the property were redacted from court documents, and the prosecution said he committed the latter offence to deceive a bank into disbursing a loan for its purchase.

His previous sentence was for his role in working with a group of people to deceive a bank into disbursing mortgage loans totalling more than $5.1 million in relation to the sale of two houses.

In a 2024 statement, the police said the bank incurred a loss of more than $1.79 million on the two properties.

Sufandi was sentenced to 6½ years’ jail in August that year over two counts of cheating and five counts of using forged documents as original copies.

Four other men linked to this case were earlier sentenced to between 10 weeks and 7½ years’ jail.

In 2025, Sufandi’s sentence was increased to nine years’ jail following an appeal.

He will start serving his latest sentence after completing his earlier one.

In the current case, the prosecution said that he worked as a conveyancing clerk for the law firm from 2004 to 2012.

Deputy public prosecutors Joseph Gwee and Matthew Choo, as well as Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) prosecutor Ian Yang, stated in court documents that Sufandi’s duties included collecting cheques issued by the firm’s clients.

These clients had handed over the cheques for specific purposes linked to their property purchases.

They included payment of deposits for transactions involving conveyancing, the legal process of transferring a property’s title from one owner to another.

Between Feb 18 and Aug 5, 2010, Sufandi was entrusted with three cheques from two of the law firm’s clients, amounting to more than $122,000 in total.

The money was to be used to pay for stamp duties and deposits.

Instead, he deposited the cheques into his bank account and used the ill-gotten gains for his personal benefit.

In a bid to cover his tracks, he later used his own money and the firm’s funds to make payments such as stamp duties.

Separately, Sufandi was also responsible for handling the conveyancing matters relating to a certain property.

The court heard that all legal and conveyancing documents pertaining to the property had to be submitted to a bank to satisfy its conditions for loan disbursement by the completion date of April 19, 2012.

The bank had asked for documents, including a stamp certificate relating to the property’s sale and purchase agreement.

The prosecutors told the court that on or around April 12 that year, Sufandi submitted a counterfeit stamp certificate to the bank.

They added: “Investigations revealed that the accused had created the counterfeit stamp certificate by physically cutting the top watermark and the IRAS logo from another stamp certificate, pasting it onto a piece of paper and making a copy.

“He subsequently typed out the relevant details of the property on the fictitious stamp certificate and printed it out on the photocopied letterhead.”

Sufandi’s offence came to light when a bank officer found out that a purchaser’s name was not correctly spelt on the bogus certificate.

He was arrested in December 2019.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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