5 months’ jail for nurse who forged depressant prescriptions for own use
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Candy Wong Shin Ting forged prescriptions for various benzodiazepines, a class of depressant drugs.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
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SINGAPORE – A nurse who forged prescriptions for various benzodiazepines, a class of depressant drugs, to obtain them for her own use was sentenced to five months’ jail on July 1.
Candy Wong Shin Ting, 43, pleaded guilty to three charges – one for forgery for the purposes of cheating, one for cheating, and one over a separate offence involving the handing over of internet banking login credentials to someone she had met on Tinder.
Her lawyers, Invictus Law’s Cory Wong and Josephus Tan, said she suffered from substance use disorder and had obtained the drugs to manage her insomnia.
They added that Wong is currently seeking help at the National Addictions Management Service at the Institute of Mental Health to address the root of the problem and reduce her risk of reoffending.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Claire Poh said Wong, who was a registered nurse, started work at a clinic as a part-time clinic assistant on Feb 15, 2021.
Some time on or around June 25, 2022, the doctor at the clinic wrote a prescription for Wong for 75mg of the painkiller Lyrica for her frozen shoulder.
DPP Poh said Wong added a handwritten prescription for 10 vials of the sedative Dormicum without the doctor’s knowledge or authority, and used it to buy the medication from a hospital pharmacy.
She went on to forge prescriptions on 33 other occasions till March 11, 2023, using them to buy medications such as Xanax and Tramadol from the same pharmacy.
To aid in her forgery, Wong went to a stamp-making shop to replicate the doctor’s stamps bearing his name and medical licence number.
On certain occasions, Wong wrote on the forged prescriptions that the medicine she was ordering was for the clinic’s use.
Said DPP Poh: “On these occasions, she misrepresented that she was collecting the medications as a clinic staff on behalf of the clinic. In reality, the accused obtained the medications for her own consumption and had consumed the medications purchased.”
On March 10, 2023, the manager at the pharmacy lodged a police report.
Meanwhile, Wong was also working as an operations executive at another clinic that began operations in July 2022. She was tasked to place orders for medication from suppliers.
On Sept 9, 2022, the doctor at the clinic was going through invoices for medication orders when she noticed an order made for various items, including 25 vials of Midazolam, that neither she nor the clinic manager had placed.
When queried about the order, Wong lied and said she had made an error.
The doctor filed a police report after another order she had not placed was delivered four days later and the supplier said Wong had put in the order.
Seeking a sentence of between 5½ and 9½ months’ jail, DPP Poh said Wong used subterfuge and that there was a high degree of premeditation involved.
DPP Poh also highlighted that tolerance and physical dependence from prolonged use and inappropriate use of benzodiazepines are becoming widespread and problematic locally and in various parts of the world.
Wong’s lawyers asked for a jail sentence of not more than four months.
For the charges involving the forged prescriptions, they said there was minimal, or even no economic harm caused, and that she did not act out of greed or undue financial enrichment.
