A Police News Release dated 27 January 2019 informed that 13 persons had been charged in court for their participation in a criminal syndicate that had used nine dormant business entities to obtain about $39.9 million of training grants from SSG over a six-month period in 2017. Two key members of the syndicate, Ng Cheng Kwee (“Ng”) and Lee Lai Leng (“Lee”), who are husband and wife, have pleaded guilty to cheating, forgery and money laundering offences with other similar charges taken into consideration for sentencing, and were convicted on 23 April 2021. On 16 August 2021, Ng and Lee were sentenced to 213 months’ and 168 months’ imprisonment respectively.
Between January 2017 and July 2017, Ng, Lee and other operatives of the scheme conspired to register nine dormant entities as applicant companies and training providers with SSG, using the SingPass log-in credentials of Ng, Lee and their family members. They submitted various forged documents such as CPF statements, utilities bills and rental bills through SSG’s SkillsConnect portal to register the organisational profile of these entities.
Ng and Lee then submitted fraudulent course fee grant applications and claims between April 2017 and August 2017. This resulted in SSG disbursing more than $400,000 of training grants to the entities.
Following this, Ng, Lee and other operatives of the syndicate decided to perpetrate the scheme on a larger scale. They recruited other individuals as nominee directors for the nine entities to prevent their own names from appearing in the claims to evade detection by the authorities. In July 2017, Ang Cheng Guan, Tan Wee Kee and a third individual, agreed to be the directors of the nine entities and handed over their SingPass credentials to the syndicate, in return for financial gains.
Between August 2017 and October 2017, Ng, Lee and the other operatives of the syndicate submitted fraudulent course fee grant applications and claims to SSG using the SingPass credentials of Ang Cheng Guan, Tan Wee Kee and another nominee director. This resulted in SSG disbursing more than $39.5 million of training grants to the entities.
When SSG flagged out some of the course fee grant applications and claims for manual checks, Ng and Lee, submitted forged and/or falsified documents to SSG between May 2017 and August 2017. These documents include employment contracts and attendance records of training courses, which were never conducted.
In total, the syndicate submitted a total of 8,381 course fee grant applications and a corresponding 8,391 claims to SSG between April 2017 and October 2017. These submissions involved 25,141 employees purportedly working for the six dormant applicant entities, who had purportedly attended training courses conducted by the three dormant training providers. There were no training courses conducted and none of the 25,141 individuals were employees of the applicant entities. The syndicate’s scheme resulted in SSG disbursing approximately $39.9 million of training grants in total to the corporate bank accounts of eight entities.
Subsequently, in August and September 2017, Ng and Lee encashed cheques from the corporate bank account of one of the nine entities. To conceal his identity, Ng approached his acquaintance, Vincent Peter, to arrange for someone to encash cheques from the corporate accounts of the nine entities which had been pre-signed by the nominee directors. Vincent Peter in turn approached Manickam Pragasam and Nathan S/O Muniandy to encash the cheques. The cash was then handed to Ng or to another operative of the syndicate who would then pass the cash to Lee.
The cash was then placed in a safe at the flat of Lee’s brother, Lee Chi Wai, which Ng had instructed Lee to purchase to safe-keep the cash. Ng also discussed with Lee to use some of their benefits of criminal conduct to purchase gold. Following their discussions, Lee used the cash placed in the safe to purchase a total of 11 kilograms of gold in the form of gold bars from two jewellery shops located in People’s Park Complex.
On 28 October 2017, Ng left Singapore for China. Around 31 October 2017 while Ng was overseas, he called Lee to move the contents of the safe. On 1 November 2017, Lee called Lee Chi Wai and instructed him to move the contents in the safe, comprising $6,742,380 in cash and 11 kilograms of gold bars, to a different location for safekeeping. Lee Chi Wai followed Lee’s instructions and placed most of the contents in a black duffel bag and a suitcase, except for $50,000 cash and four boxes of commemorative coins, which were free gifts from the purchase of the gold bars. Lee Chi Wai then relocated the suitcase and the black duffel bag to a friend’s residence.
On 1 November 2017, Ng called an operative of the syndicate, who had been handed some of the illicit cash by Vincent Peter that day, to leave the cash in the boot of a car and to park the car at a secluded place. On the same night, Ng also instructed Lee to throw her handphone away knowing that her handphone contained evidence of her dealings with Ng and Lee Chi Wai. Lee followed Ng’s instructions and disposed her handphone near Henderson Waves. Lee was arrested on 2 November 2017 while Ng was arrested on 4 December 2017, upon his return to Singapore.
For their offences, these operatives of the syndicate were earlier convicted and given the following sentences:
- Nathan S/O Muniandy – 39 months’ imprisonment on 11 December 2019;
- Tan Wee Kee – 52 months’ imprisonment on 20 November 2019;
- Vincent Peter – 80 months’ imprisonment on 8 November 2019;
- Ang Cheng Guan – 104 months’ imprisonment on 18 October 2019;
- Manickam Pragasam – 33 months’ imprisonment on 4 June 2019; and
- Lee Chi Wai – 68 months’ imprisonment on 27 November 2018.
Annex A sets out the details of the offences that Ng, Lee and the other operatives of the syndicate were convicted of.
The court proceedings against three other persons accused of being members of the syndicate are ongoing.
The Police treat abuse of government grants seriously and will not hesitate to take actions against such offenders. Offenders will be dealt with severely in accordance with the law. SSG also takes a serious view of any individual, training provider or applicant company that abuses SSG funding schemes. SSG will not hesitate to impose penalties against those who contravene our funding terms and conditions. Since this incident, SSG has acquired new capabilities, such as fraud analytics, and put in place new processes to prevent, detect and respond to fraud and abuse, whether by individuals or by companies.
SSG encourages members of the public to provide information of potential fraud or abuse cases at audit@ssg.gov.sg or the hotline at 6326-2828.
Annex A – Details of the Offences that Operatives of the Syndicates were Convicted of
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
16 August 2021 @ 8:05 PM