She added: “The accused’s cunning is evident from how she deliberately withdrew no more than $1,000 from (the victim’s) bank account in a single transaction, to avoid triggering the bank’s automatic alert.
On Tuesday, DPP Lim stressed that Eka had made no restitution, and urged the court to sentence her to between 16 and 20 months’ jail. She finally admitted that she had made the unauthorised withdrawals. The employer alerted the police on July 18, and officers arrested Eka later that day. She lied, claiming that his father had made all the transactions. The younger man confronted her when he realised that there were multiple withdrawals from his father’s bank account in June. The senior citizen died on July 10, and six days later, Eka’s employer received his father’s bank statement for the previous month. She remitted some of the cash to her creditors in Indonesia, and also took $8,000 of her ill-gotten gains to Indonesia when she made a trip there in April 2023. She purposely withdrew not more than $1,000 in a single transaction to avoid triggering the bank’s automatic alert to the elderly man for transactions involving larger sums of money. Soon after, Eka withdrew money from the account without his knowledge and consent as she wanted to pay off her debts. The DPP said: “(The victim) only ever authorised the accused to withdraw money from his bank account on his behalf, and never for the accused’s own benefit.”