An English teacher in Singapore ended up teaching her students a lesson about corruption instead after allegedly overcharging them for learning materials, and then pocketing the extra money in an embezzlement scheme that totaled some $40,000 SGD ($29,000 USD).That teacher, Maslinda Zainal, is now on trial for criminal breach of trust, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, under Singapore's criminal code.Here's how the scam allegedly played out: Maslinda, who was the head of the English department at the Woodgrove Secondary School, charged her students directly for learning materials called an "Excel package." But what she really excelled at was inflating the prices, then siphoning off the difference, using it to pad out an annual salary that already exceeded $100,000 SGD ($76,600 USD). She was eventually caught when another teacher noticed the discrepancy between how much Maslinda collected and what showed up on invoices at the school's bookstore.
Watch: How to Get Away with Stealing
And it turns out she's not the first person to think up this (admittedly pretty amateur) scheme.In Indonesia, teachers takes an entirely different approach to corruption, where corrupt educators sell the answers of tests to students during the big national exams, or just don't bother to show up to work at all and still collect a salary.In Japan, a teacher embezzled 7.7 million yen ($67,698 USD) from his students, telling them it was meant for extracurricular activities and overseas studies. What did he use all that money for? To pay for in-game purchases on his favorite mobile games and buy second-hand plastic models. I guess the allure of that special Halloween PUBG outfit was too hard to resit.We still don't know what Maslinda spent all that (allegedly) pilfered cash on, but as her trial goes on, we can only hope more details surface.
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Watch: How to Get Away with Stealing
And it turns out she's not the first person to think up this (admittedly pretty amateur) scheme.In Indonesia, teachers takes an entirely different approach to corruption, where corrupt educators sell the answers of tests to students during the big national exams, or just don't bother to show up to work at all and still collect a salary.In Japan, a teacher embezzled 7.7 million yen ($67,698 USD) from his students, telling them it was meant for extracurricular activities and overseas studies. What did he use all that money for? To pay for in-game purchases on his favorite mobile games and buy second-hand plastic models. I guess the allure of that special Halloween PUBG outfit was too hard to resit.We still don't know what Maslinda spent all that (allegedly) pilfered cash on, but as her trial goes on, we can only hope more details surface.