Doctor forged 4 certificates of competence submitted to MOH to obtain licence for medical practice

SINGAPORE – A doctor specialising in aesthetic services

forged four certificates of competence (COCs) and submitted them to the Ministry of Health (MOH)

to obtain a licence for his medical practice.

Two of the COCs pertained to workshops that Bernard Tan Wen Sheng had not attended.

COCs are a crucial part of the regulatory process, which MOH uses to decide if the application for a clinic licence should be granted.

They are integral to a system that is in place to ensure that members of the public who visit a licensed aesthetics clinic can be assured that the medical professionals attending to them are certified competent to administer their desired aesthetic procedures safely, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ariel Tan told the court.

On June 30, Tan, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery and one count of giving false information to a public servant. Two other forgery charges will be considered during his sentencing.

The prosecutor said that on or before February 2023, Tan decided to set up his medical practice Bay Aesthetics Clinic, at Marina Bay Link Mall. He then submitted an application for a clinic licence to MOH.

DPP Tan told the court that to obtain a COC, an applicant must attend a workshop for a particular aesthetic procedure and pass the requisite examination. The Aesthetic Dermatology Education Group (ADEG) would then issue the COC after the applicant passes it.

On Feb 20, 2023, a manager from MOH’s Hospital Ambulatory Care & Research Regulation Department conducted an inspection of Tan’s clinic via video-link.

The next day, she e-mailed him to ask for COCs relating to three services – botulinum toxin injections, fillers and chemical peels.

Tan then realised that he did not have some of the relevant COCs and decided to alter his wife’s COCs to create his own.

Tan obtained four COCs which were issued to his wife after she passed the necessary examinations in 2017.

The certificates were linked to workshops relating to four different procedures – chemical peels, assisted lasers or intense pulsed light for hair removal (IPL hair removal), filler, and botulinum toxin injections.

Tan then printed out his name on paper with a font size similar to his wife’s details on the COCs and placed it on each of the COCs to cover his wife’s details.

He then scanned the certificates one by one with his name positioned neatly above the line where the workshop attendee’s name was written.

At around 2.30pm on Feb 21, 2023, Tan sent the scanned copies of the forged certificates to the manager via e-mail.

DPP Tan told the court that Tan had, in fact, attended workshops involving filler and botulinum toxin injections in 2017, but had lost the COCs for them. Tan had not attended workshops involving chemical peels and IPL hair removal.

On Feb 27, 2023, the manager sent Tan another e-mail, stating that ADEG could not find records of his purported attendance of the latter two workshops. She then asked him for either the original COCs or an e-mail confirmation from ADEG of his attendance of the relevant workshops.

Tan sent an e-mail the next day, insisting that he had attended the courses in May 2017.

The DPP said: “(He also claimed that) he was simply unable to find the original COCs for these two workshops.

“The accused even added that the COCs he had sent to the complainant looked ‘grainy’ because his family members had scanned them in after there was a fire in his house in October 2017 which caused water damage to some of his documents.”

The application was eventually approved on March 13, 2023, and Tan was allowed to provide services involving filler and botulinum toxin injections. He provided chemical peel and IPL hair removal services after he attended workshops for them in April that year.

Court documents did not disclose how his offences came to light, but he was later charged in court in 2024.

Tan will be sentenced on July 29.

A search with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority on June 30 revealed that Tan is no longer a director at two firms – Bay Aesthetics and Bay Medical.