SINGAPORE: A man who conspired with his ex-colleague to pocket more than 25,000 iPhones from a repair company was sentenced to nine years’ jail on Wednesday (Jul 12).
Their actions cost the repair company about US$5 million.
Lim Jen Hee, 51, was convicted of two charges of conspiring with logistics manager Serene Ng Shu Kian to commit criminal breach of trust by misappropriating the devices.
Ng was sentenced to nine years’ jail in January 2021 for her role in the conspiracy after she pleaded guilty. She testified against Lim in his trial.
The pair worked for Pegatron Service Singapore, which repairs defective iPhones for Apple.
The defective devices would be sent to Pegatron, where a production team would check the phones and repair them. The logistics department would then send the phones back to Apple service providers or retailers.
However, phones that could not be repaired would be retained for further checks, sent to Apple’s warehouse vendor Schenker to be scrapped or torn down for parts, or sent to a different service provider for repairs.
Ng began exploiting a loophole in Apple’s and Pegatron’s processes in late 2017. She was authorised to manually write off a phone from Apple’s inventory system, but she knew that Apple and Pegatron would not verify if the written-off phone had been delivered to Schenker.
In this way, she could falsely indicate that a phone had been delivered, and proceed to sell it for profit instead.
Lim, who worked as an assistant operations manager before he quit and began committing the offences, found an overseas buyer willing to take the defective phones.
The pair worked together to pocket the phones. Lim provided Ng with details of the transactions and communicated with the buyer, while Ng ordered a subordinate to pack the phones to be sent to Malaysia.
If the phones were rejected, Ng would have them sent back to her home in Singapore and she would return the phones to Pegatron without anyone noticing.
The pair split the profits between them, with Ng earning more than S$3.1 million (US$2.3 million) in profit and Lim earning between S$2.2 million and S$2.9 million.
Lim spent the money on his personal expenses and legal fees.
The crimes were uncovered when Apple launched a surprise audit in May 2019 and discovered that there were phones that were unaccounted for.
As Pegatron was contractually obliged to pay Apple compensation of between US$150 and US$250 per misappropriated phone, Pegatron paid US$5.05 million to Apple as compensation.
Lim intends to file an appeal.