Jail for man who cheated govt agency Workforce Singapore of over $70k in funds for upskilling

SINGAPORE - A partner of a firm that developed computer games hatched a plan to cheat Workforce Singapore (WSG) of more than $70,000 in total by making fraudulent claims for funds supporting workers’ upskilling and reskilling.

Chan Ah Wee, 56, who was with a company called Common Extract at the time of the offences, was sentenced to a year and four months’ jail on March 12 after he pleaded guilty to a cheating charge linked to over $31,000.

Two other charges relating to the remaining amount were considered during his sentencing.

The Singaporean has since made full restitution.

In mid-2017, Common Extract engaged a man, identified as Mr Tiong Ming Huat, as a project manager on a trial basis for a period of one month.

The firm later employed him as a manager from July 2017 to June 2018.

Common Extract applied for Mr Tiong to join an initiative known as the Professional Conversion Programme offered by WSG, a statutory board under the Ministry of Manpower.

The scheme is among WSG’s programmes targeted at professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) to undergo skill conversion, so they can move into new jobs or sectors that have good opportunities for progression.

Funding support is provided to participating employers as long as they and the interested PMETs meet the eligibility criteria. The participating employers will then fund the remaining salary and course fees not covered by the funding support.

To receive the funding, Common Extract signed a Letter of Undertaking with an educational institution called Lithan Academy, which had been appointed by WSG to manage the scheme.

On or around June 20, 2017, Chan decided to deceive WSG by falsely stating that Mr Tiong’s monthly salary was $5,800, submitting to Lithan Academy letters including those showing Mr Tiong’s purported monthly salary.

In fact, Mr Tiong’s salary as stated in his employment contract was $2,500, and he had been paid less than that because of Common Extract’s poor financial performance.

DPP Chua said Chan had created these documents and Mr Tiong agreed to them.

Court documents did not disclose if Mr Tiong has been charged in court or if he had been dealt with earlier.

He was later accepted into the Professional Conversion Programme which was initially slated to start in July 2017 before it was postponed to September that year.

In January 2018, Mr Tiong resigned from Common Extract, but continued to perform work for it on an ad hoc basis.

The prosecutor said Chan failed to inform Lithan Academy and WSG about these developments.

Between February and July 2018, WSG was duped into a delivering a grant of over $31,000 to Common Extract.

WSG later found discrepancies between one of the letters Chan had submitted and Mr Tiong’s Central Provident Fund statement.

A WSG senior manager alerted the police in May 2020, and Chan was charged in court in 2023.

For cheating, an offender can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, the initiative was referred to as the Place-and-Train scheme instead of Professional Conversion Programme. This has been corrected.