Singapore wine merchant sues buyers for purchasing stolen wines

One of Singapore’s oldest wine and spirit merchants is suing wine buyers who purchased stolen wines from a former company employee, with claims for sums as high as S$900,000 (US$656,500).

Hock Tong Bee is seeking damages or returns of wines from clients who purchased wines from its former employee Luciana Lim Ying Ying, who sold 15,000 bottles of wines worth S$7 million to clients and pocketed the money between 2011 and 2013, according to a report by The Strait Times.

Lim was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2015. She was reportedly selling wines to customers under the pretence that the wines had staff discounts or that she was helping another company client to deplete stocks.

The company is now seeking to recover the misappropriated wines or the retail sum of the wines, which range in price from S$65 to S$8,673 a bottle, according to court papers reviewed by the newspaper.

The company has filed 50 cases altogether.

It’s reported that 1,102 bottles were retrieved by the police from buyers, however, some have been consumed or given away.