Company manager jailed over ruse to cheat WDA of $73,000
A company manager was sentenced yesterday to 20 months in jail for conspiring with others to cheat the then Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) of almost $73,000.
Malaysian Siew Hoong Hua, 45, was in charge of the day-to-day operations and accounts of manufacturing company Yoke Mah Plasterceil, where her husband was the director.
She pleaded guilty to five charges of engaging in a conspiracy to cheat, and eight similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
In 2014, Siew got a call from training provider Loyal Reliance asking if she was interested in sending Yoke Mah employees for corporate training.
After a course in February that year, Siew did not want to continue sending her employees for courses at Loyal Reliance.
Serene Loh, a training consultant at Loyal Reliance, with her colleague, proposed to Siew that Loyal Reliance could continue to organise training courses for Yoke Mah's employees to make claims for WDA training grants under a funding scheme.
These training courses would not be conducted, but false paperwork would be submitted to make it seem otherwise.
This way, Loyal Reliance would be able to benefit from course fees, and Yoke Mah would be able to earn from the absentee payroll grant disbursed by WDA.
Its employees would also attain training certification even while continuing their daily work, Deputy Public Prosecutor Eugene Phua said.
Siew also intended to submit the false training certification to the Ministry of Manpower to help Yoke Mah's foreign workers obtain S Passes.
TRAINING DATES
To execute the plan, Loh and the other training consultant would call Siew to propose training dates, and Siew would then check if there were any trainees on leave during that period.
Loh also enlisted the help of three training consultants, who would block out the supposed training dates on their calendars and submit claims to Loyal Reliance after the dates passed.
Siew would also sign the attendance records on behalf of the trainees to show they had full attendance for the courses.
The plan continued after Loh left Loyal Reliance in April 2015 and went to the Image Institute of Learning and Development in May 2015.
In all, 13 fraudulent claims amounting to a little over $72,900 were made between March 2014 and May 2015.
DPP Phua asked for at least 20 months' jail, saying such offences were hard to detect.
In January, Loh was jailed for 29 months. The cases of the three others involved are pending.
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