SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The owner of a tuition centre created seven phantom trainees and submitted 63 fraudulent claims to obtain grants totalling S$126,749 under a government initiative aimed at helping people improve their employability during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gerard Lim Jian Rong, 36, was sentenced to 22 months’ jail on Tuesday (Oct 3) after he pleaded guilty to four counts of cheating and a forgery charge. Six other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Lim abused the SGUnited Traineeships programme (SGUT), which the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Workforce Singapore Agency (WSA) introduced in March 2020 to help trainees develop industry-relevant skills amid the weaker hiring climate during the pandemic.
The prosecutor said that the trainees were usually fresh graduates and Success.Nat Tutorial Centre, which Lim owns, was a host organisation under the initiative.
Lim duped the Singapore Business Federation (SBF), which was managing and administering the programme, into disbursing the grants to the centre after submitting the details of actual people who were not trainees at the centre.
At the time, he was the principal of Success.Nat, its key decision-maker, and was also responsible for its day-to-day operations, which Deputy Public Prosecutor Edwin Soh said included planning classes and hiring tutors.
As a host organisation, the firm would administer programmes and pay trainees a monthly allowance.
The DPP told the court that a host organisation could obtain a training grant of 80 per cent of the monthly training allowance paid to its trainees.
This grant would be disbursed by SBF, but the monies for these grants were public funds from MOM’s budget.
Among other things, the host organisation must send supporting documents such as payment slips to SBF every month to claim the training allowance grants.
SBF would then assess and approve the claims before disbursing the monies.
Lim then hatched a plan to dupe SBF into disbursing training allowance grants to Success.Nat.
He placed job advertisements for the role of a teaching and curriculum executive on several portals with the hashtag “#SGUnited Traineeships”.
Those who were interested in applying for this role would contact Lim, and e-mail him their resumes, NRIC details and academic transcripts.
The DPP said: “The accused would not respond... as he had no intention of onboarding them on traineeships with Success.Nat.
“Instead, the accused used their details to fill up the ‘Appointed Trainee under SGUT’ form and submit the same to SBF.”
Lim would also prepare the required documents such as the training agreements, which he submitted to SBF to give the impression that these purported individuals had traineeships with Success.Nat from October 2020 to June 2021.
Lim would also indicate to SBF that he was paying the purported trainees the maximum training allowance of $2,500 a month.
DPP Soh told the court: “In reality, the accused submitted the documents... without the knowledge and consent of the purported trainees. The accused never onboarded any of the purported trainees and did not pay them any training allowances.”
He also forged the signatures of purported trainees on seven training agreements.
Court documents did not disclose how the offences came to light but he was charged in court in March 2023.
He made full restitution on Feb 18, 2022.
