“ONE-TIME corporate high-flier Victor Tan who founded Accord Customer Care Solutions(ACCS), a public listed mobile phone company  was sentenced to four years and three months’ jail on Friday for his role in cheating Nokia and for breaching the Securities and Futures’ Act. (ACCS has now being renamed as mDR)

The fraud case involved:

·    Top executives at ACCS, a phone repair company, devised a scam to cheat mobile phone giant Nokia out of millions of dollars by submitting bills for fictitious repair work. This was due to shortfall of mobile phone repairs revenue earlier advised by Nokia to be about 20,000 to 30,000 phones a month which therefore caused considerable loss to ACCS;

·    The fraud scheme involved the attempt to cheat Nokia for fake warranty repair claims for S$4.3 million for the period from Jan to September 2005;

·    Earlier sentences imposed include the following:

(a) The company’s former general manager, Damien Ang, pleaded guilty to 21 charges in May 2006 and was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment ;

(b) Yip Hwai Chong, the ex-CFO was one of former top ACCS executive who had been sentenced to 4 years and 4 months in jail. After plead bargaining with the prosecution,Yip pleaded guilty to 88 counts out of 98 counts of aggravated cheating and fraud against Nokia. He was also accused of overstating company profits and falsifying financial documents.

©   Two former managers, LeoRong Wen and Teo Yew Chee were fined a maximum of S$10,000 each .The two are the first among the 12 ex-ACCS executives who are being charged in the scandal.

It might be quite mind boggling to believe that the aforesaid perpetuators believed that they can run scotched free by submitting fictitious phone repair claims to the tune of S$4.3 million to the mobile phone giant. Don’t they think that Nokia should has its own internal control/checks?