Four charged over bogus SkillsFuture claims worth over S$70,000
Members of public visiting and asking questions of the SkillsFuture Credit and courses. TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — For the first time, four men involved with a training provider have been charged with SkillsFuture Credit fraud amounting to more than S$70,000 through bogus claims for courses that were not conducted.
Three of the men allegedly used Biz HR Solutionz to submit sham claims from hundreds of individuals who had not attended any courses.
Zheng Zhenwei Eric, Tan Yu Sheng, and Sim Chee Kiong each face between 18 and 150 counts of cheating the Government to disburse SkillsFuture Credits by submitting fake claims and attendance records.
The other accused, Yeo Junwei Joel, allegedly contributed to the scam by signing off on bogus attendance records in his capacity as a training facilitator with Biz HR Solutionz.
These claims, totalling S$73,000, came flooding in between Jan 5 and Feb 17 last year. They were made for three bogus courses titled “Principle of Supervision”, “Marketing Jumpstart & Target Customer Profiling” and “Understanding and Proper Administering of the Employment Act”.
Zheng, 35, faces 150 charges — the most among his alleged accomplices — for instigating 150 individuals to fake their claims.
He told the court on Tuesday (July 11) that he intends to plead guilty.
Yeo, 35; Tan, 29; and Sim, 41; plan to engage lawyers for their cases. They each face 31, 22 and 18 charges respectively.
The four were released on bail and will next appear in court on July 27.
The men face up to 10 years’ jail and a fine for cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of claims to Biz HR Solutionz. For defrauding attendance records in his capacity as an employee, Yeo faces up to 10 years’ jail and/or a fine per charge.
The SkillsFuture Credit scheme, which gives Singaporeans above the age of 25 money to attend upgrading courses from polytechnics, varsity institutions and private providers, was started in January last year.
In July, Biz HR Solutionz became one of three training providers suspended from receiving government funding and grant assistance under the SkillsFuture Credit scheme. The firms’ courses were also delisted from the SkillsFuture Credit directory.
Investigations into the other two training providers, AI Industries and Alliance Continens, are still ongoing.
The suspension came after an audit by the Workforce Development Agency, which was administering the scheme at that time. A new statutory board, SkillsFuture Singapore, has since taken over the administration of the scheme.
In February this year, SkillsFuture Singapore flagged a separate case of 4,400 Singaporeans making fake claims amounting to some S$2.2 million for a single course. This case is also currently under investigation.
New guidelines were introduced in May for all claims of SkillsFuture Credit to be paid out directly to the training providers instead of to individuals, in order to stamp out cases of abuse.
Since January, the authorities also changed the guidelines to prevent training providers from using gimmicks such as lucky draws and freebies to promote their programmes.
A Process Review Committee, comprising SkillsFuture Singapore board members, has also been formed to review policies and procedures relating to training grants.
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, we reported in our headline and story that four men have been charged over bogus SkillsFuture claims worth over S$100,000, with the false claims totalling S$108,160. That is incorrect. The total false claims submitted came up to S$73,000. We are sorry for the errors.
