THE first sign of trouble was when they returned to their office in Shenton Way and found it locked up. They had returned after a one-week enforced leave period, which ended last Friday.
The second sign was when customers started calling them non-stop - to get their money back.
The 25 staff members at home-grown company Indigoz - who claimed they had not been paid February's wages and sales commissions since January - became afraid then that they may never get their own money back.
Indigoz sells i-chq cards: stored value dining cards which gives $40 extra value for every $100 deposited.
When she spoke to my paper yesterday, senior business executive Cheryl Lim, 44, also claimed that their monthly CPF contributions had not been paid for eight months.
Said Ms Lim: "We SMSed and called the boss, but he didn't reply."
She estimated that what they are owed is more than $50,000 in total.
All staff had been asked to go on leave for "internal auditing" from Feb 22 to 28, said Ms Lim. On the last day of the enforced leave, they received a letter of termination.
Shocked, Ms Lim called her colleagues and together, they went to an office the company had supposedly moved to. The address was provided in the termination letter. But the staff members who went there discovered it was only a mailing address.
Since last Saturday, more than 100 customers have been demanding to know why their stored value dining cards - which were usually accepted at restaurants such as Crystal Jade and Michelangelo's - were rejected starting that same day.
When my paper contacted four of the i-chq's partner restaurants, they said that they have been "facing technical and logistic issues with the company".
my paper understands this was because Indigoz had not been settling its payments with them.
One unhappy i-chq customer is a homemaker, who wanted to be known only as Madam Neo, 55. Her family had three such cards, in which they had put in about $4,500 altogether.
Indigoz was investigated by the Commercial Affairs Department for fraudulent business conduct in 2005. The company was later placed under judicial management, which protected it from an estimated claim of about $1.5 million.
It was also fined $10,000 by the Monetary Authority of Singapore for a breach of the Banking Act. Indigoz stated on its website that it is "in the process of a merger and restructure involving a regional loyalty specialist", and therefore "acceptance of i-chqs (have been) put on hold with effect from March 1st, 2008".
my paper made multiple calls to Indigoz yesterday but they all went unanswered.
Meanwhile, Ms Lim and 11 other staff members filed reports with the police and the Ministry of Manpower last Friday.
When contacted, the police confirmed that they had received the report and had advised "the complainants on their legal recourse".
