Ex-Spring S’pore employees sentenced to jail for fraud
TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — The pair of former Spring Singapore employees who made fraudulent applications under the names of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to cheat the statutory board of around S$50,000 were sentenced to jail yesterday.
Soh Hua Xiang, 31, was sentenced to 15 months’ jail for 21 counts of cheating and forgery charges that took place while he was employed by Spring. Another 180 charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
His co-accused and lover, I Shu Hui, 30, was sentenced to 12 months’ jail for 20 similar charges, while another 176 charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that sometime around August 2015, Soh and I had conspired to use the names of several SMEs to apply for Innovation and Capability Vouchers (ICV) online, where these fraudulent applications were made for Point-of-Sales (POS) systems.
Under the ICV scheme administered by Spring, SMEs can apply for a S$5,000 voucher, up to a maximum of eight, to develop their business capabilities in areas such as productivity, innovation and human resource.
Soh, who was a business capabilities manager at Spring from 2011 to 2015, targeted minimarts as the POS systems were applicable to their business. He created different email addresses, forged quotations for the POS systems from four companies without their knowledge, falsified invoices and receipts supposedly issued by these four solution providers, and submitted them to Spring. A joint account he set up with another friend was used to receive the ill-gotten funds.
Soh then submitted forged Giro authorisation forms to claim reimbursements from Spring. I, who was working as Spring’s finance manager then, would approve the disbursements.
Earlier, Soh’s defence lawyer Che Wei Chin said his client was disillusioned and frustrated that he could not convince his former boss that the ICV scheme had some loopholes, and committed the offences to highlight these loopholes.
But district judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said Soh did not have to make 40 fraudulent applications to prove that.
After sentencing, the pair were given the chance to address the court. Soh said he wanted to use the opportunity to convey his apologies to Spring, the public service and the people he had disappointed and hurt. I also said she wanted to “express (her) sincere apologies” to her ex-colleagues at Spring. For cheating, they could have been jailed up to 10 years’ jail and fined for each charge. SIAU MING EN
