DUBAI: Two public employees who siphoned Dhs484,000 from an investment company’s coffers were sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay Dhs983,000 on Wednesday.

Both customer service employees – an Arab woman, 40, and an agent, 37 – cancelled some work and visit visas from a government institution in some cases and reduced fees in other transactions.

They pocketed the fees customers had paid and also pocketed the differences regarding the transactions. They embezzled Dhs478,345 from 2008 to Aug.25, 2011.

The agent additionally siphoned Dhs8,000 worth of fees belonging to his employer. Prosecutors on Jul.5 accused both of embezzlement, and counterfeiting and using official e-documents.

During a Criminal Court hearing on Aug.16 the woman kept silent for a while after which she argued that the money they embezzled was far less than the one mentioned in the prosecution records.

She contended that it was the agent who used his eligibilities to log on to the e-system and fill in the bogus data. She said this as he quietly looked at her and the judge without denying.

The Criminal Court sentenced them to six months in prison and ordered each one to pay a Dhs10,000 fine. It also ordered the agent to return the Dhs8,000 and pay an equivalent fine.

In addition, it ordered both of them to jointly return the Dhs478,345 and hand it back to their workplace besides paying an equivalent fine after which they will be deported.

On the record, the agent learned from a programmer how to change an application in the system. He taught the woman how to do it and disclosed to her the programmer’s ID and password.

He asked her to give him some of the embezzled sums. They started sharing the sums. After a couple of months she stopped being scared that the fraudulent activities would be discovered

She would finish a client’s transaction then log in to the system, change that transaction to another one of lower fees and pocket the difference. At times she would remove a given transaction from the system and pocket all the fees.