KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 ― A Malaysian student in Australia who mistakenly received A$4.6 million (RM13.8 million) due to a banking error allegedly moved A$5,000 a day to secret bank accounts to hide A$1.3 million.
Australia’s The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday police as saying that chemical engineering student Christine Jiaxin Lee, 21, who was charged in Waverley Local Court Thursday with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage through deception and knowingly dealing with criminal proceeds, had spent A$85,000 a week on designer clothes and handbags, living in a luxury penthouse in Sydney.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Lee allegedly hid A$1.3 million by moving A$33,000 a week into private accounts at banks not connected to Westpac, the bank that accidentally transferred A$4.6 million to her account as an overdraft in August 2012.
The transfers were small enough to have gone unnoticed among banking officials.
The Australian paper said a significant portion of the other missing A$3.3 million was already spent or could have been moved overseas.
UK paper Daily Mail reported that Lee, who was arrested at Sydney Airport Tuesday after she attempted to fly back to Malaysia, has been taken into custody by immigration authorities even though she was due to be released by the police yesterday after being granted A$1,000 bail in court.
“She was taken by immigration and will be held in detention at Villawood,” a police source told Daily Mail, referring to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney.
“She got bail for what she did but the visa is another thing and they'll deal with that.”
Between July 2014 and April 2015, Lee allegedly made numerous withdrawals totalling A$4,653,333.02, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Australian magistrate Lisa Stapleton who heard the case said, “It isn't proceeds of crime. It’s money we all dream of,” and warned that the police would struggle to prove that the spending of the money was illegal, the Daily Mail wrote.
