Woman jailed 27 months for defrauding former Workforce Development Agency

SINGAPORE - A woman was sentenced to 27 months’ jail on Friday for defrauding the former Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in relation to a funding scheme.

Liu Mei Ying, who was a sole director and shareholder of two training providers – Derma Floral Beauty Academy and Derma Floral Beauty – was on July 3 convicted of 27 fraud-related charges after a trial, the police said on Saturday.

She was also the sole proprietor of Beaux Ex Bellus Trading. The companies are collectively known as Derma Floral Group.

Liu has appealed against the conviction and sentence.

Under WDA’s funding scheme, companies and registered businesses could apply online for training grants to fund their employees’ participation in courses run by approved training providers. The scheme was aimed at encouraging employers to upgrade their employees’ skills by helping to defray training costs.

For WDA to disburse any grant, a participant must fulfil 75 per cent of the required course attendance. For the agency to disburse the absentee payroll grant, the participant must be an employee of the applicant company for the entire course duration. An absentee payroll grant helps an employer defray the manpower cost incurred when it sends an employee for training.

Between December 2011 and July 2013, Liu instigated her employee, Lau Pin Lin, to carry out a series of fraudulent acts in relation to the scheme.

These included deceiving WDA into disbursing $62,983.77 in training grants to Derma Floral Group and two companies that sent their employees for training at Liu’s company. False information about trainees from Liu’s company was submitted to WDA online.

Lau made eight online submissions to WDA, falsely stating that six trainees of eight courses conducted by Derma Floral Group had attended at least 75 per cent of their respective course hours for these eight courses.

Liu instigated Lau to conceal the fraud by creating sham documents and submitting some of them to WDA during its audit of the training grants disbursed to Derma Floral Group.

Liu also instigated Lau to cheat WDA into consenting to Derma Floral Beauty Academy and Derma Floral Beauty retaining the training grants earlier disbursed to them by submitting eight sets of attendance records to WDA falsely showing that two trainees had attended at least 75 per cent of two courses.

Lau was convicted on Aug 23, 2019, after pleading guilty to her offences in this series of fraud. On Sept 13, 2019, she was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail.

WDA was reconstituted in 2016 into two statutory boards, Workforce Singapore and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG).

Correction note: This story has been edited for clarity.