Court upholds 4-year prison term for W2.3b embezzlement by funeral home employee

A South Korean appellate court upheld the four-year prison sentence Tuesday for a woman in her 50s for embezzling about 2.3 billion won ($1.73 million) over eight years from a funeral home.

The 54-year-old employee was convicted in June for embezzlement and had appealed her original sentence, claiming it was excessively harsh. However, the Daejeon High Court rejected her appeal.

The woman was accused of siphoning company funds while working as a bookkeeper at a funeral home in Asan, South Chungcheong Province. She started working at the funeral home in 2014. Between May 2015 and August 2023, she made 4,780 separate transfers from the company’s account to her or her husband’s account, embezzling a total of 2.3 billion won.

The stolen funds were used to purchase a 150 million won trailer for her husband, an apartment and pay off loans totaling 200 million won. She also took out 22 insurance policies, paying 2.75 million won per month in premiums, according to the court.

The lower court had handed down the four-year sentence, stating the scale of the embezzlement must have greatly affected the finances of the relatively small company. While the defendant later repaid 400 million won, a significant portion of the damage remains uncovered, it said.

The employee appealed the initial ruling, saying she committed the crime due to financial hardships and to cover family medical expenses.

But the high court turned down the plea, saying her spending on an apartment, insurance program, trailer for her husband and private education for her children, made it difficult to accept her defense as a crime of necessity.