19 weeks' jail for man who used names of wife, parents to cheat Govt of S$4,800 in Covid-19 support grants

SINGAPORE — The sole proprietor of an accounting firm was jailed for 19 weeks on Wednesday (Oct 12) after deceiving the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) into disbursing S$4,800 worth of Covid-19-related financial aid.

Huang Weiming applied for the Covid-19 Support Grant under the names of his wife and parents, lying that they had been retrenched or lost their jobs due to the pandemic. They were all unaware of what he did.

Applications for the financial support scheme, which was meant to help individuals who had lost their job or lost income for reasons related to the pandemic, were opened from May to December 2020.

Huang, a 38-year-old Singaporean, earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of cheating MSF and another charge of attempting to cheat the ministry.

Three other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

The court heard that Huang first applied for the Covid-19 Support Grant on his mother’s behalf in July 2020.

He was the owner and registered sole proprietor of Reastar, which provided accounting services.

He lied in the application that his mother, a homemaker, had been employed by Reastar and last earned S$1,000 a month before losing her job due to the pandemic.

Huang also submitted a fraudulent application on his wife’s behalf in September 2020, saying that she had lost her job at Tropic Planners & Landscape because of the pandemic.

In reality, she voluntarily resigned for personal reasons and became a Chinese language teacher.

Huang also falsely stated in his wife’s application that the human resource contact person was named “Mr Jean”, and gave his home phone number as the contact number. His wife was also known as Jean.

Because of this, MSF approved the applications and disbursed S$2,400 each to Huang’s wife and mother over three months.

Huang knew that both women did not meet the eligibility criteria and did not have any documentation to show that their employment statuses had been affected by Covid-19, the court heard.

Separately, Huang’s father was terminated from his job at Joseph Coach Services for misconduct.

Huang then submitted a Covid-19 Support Grant application on the older man’s behalf, saying that he had lost or would lose at least 30 per cent of his salary for three consecutive months due to Covid-19.

He also falsely stated that his father was employed by Reastar.

MSF rejected this application after determining that Huang’s father did not lose 30 per cent of his salary based on the information Huang gave.

On March last year, an MSF representative then filed a police report against Huang. He was arrested in February this year.

For each offence of cheating and dishonestly inducing a delivery of property, Huang could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.