Singapore — A domestic helper from Indonesia was discovered to have stolen 74 items from her employer after the courier company refused to send the stolen items to the helper’s boyfriend in India and to her friend in Indonesia.
She was given a six-week jail sentence for stealing the items, which are worth almost $3000, Shin Min Daily News reported.
The helper, 25, is only identified with the name “Siti.”
Investigations into Siti’s thievery showed that she began stealing from the family of her employer on Sept 1, 2020. The list of items she took includes pyjamas, ties, jackets and other pieces of clothing, food and drinks, dinnerware, and dog toys, all of which totalled $2,904.
Her three-month spree came to an end when her 60-year-old employer went back to his house on Dec 18, 2020, to find that Siti had gone. When his wife and son came home sometime later, they said they had no idea of the helper’s whereabouts.
Shortly after Siti returned to her employer’s home at around 3pm that same day, a man also came to the house bearing four bags full of items.
The man told Siti’s employer’s son that the helper had visited a courier company in a private hire car but had left the bags of items in the vehicle.
When the employer opened the bags, he found that they contained his family’s belongings.
The helper later confessed having stolen the items from the family and said she wanted to send them to her boyfriend, who is in India, and to another friend in Indonesia.
But she could not write the addresses of her boyfriend and friend properly, and so the courier company would not accept her parcels for sending.
After he discovered the family’s belongings in the bags, the employer called the police. A female officer who arrived on the scene did a body search on Siti after seeing an “unusual bulge” on her person, and discovered a wallet, foreign currency, and two cellphones in her bra.
While Siti at first said the money and phones belonged to her, she later confessed to having taken the money from the bedroom of her employer after she found it while looking for her passport.
AsiaOne reported that Siti had been working for the employer for around one year and that the family was dissatisfied with her work, saying that she often overslept.
However, they decided to give her a chance and Siti continued to work for them.
According to the Shin Min Daily News report, the helper asked her employers to forgive her and said she “wasn’t thinking clearly” when she stole their items. /TISG
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