Woman who forged documents to falsely accuse MOM officer of gross misconduct fined

SINGAPORE — Believing that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) had mishandled her mother's case, a woman decided to forge and publicise fake documents by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to hit back at the officer who was in charge.

In that document, she made false allegations against the public servant, stating that his actions were “capable of amounting to gross misconduct” and that AGC had commenced court proceedings against him, a court heard on Monday (May 23).

For her actions, Tham Yim Siong, 49, was fined S$2,000 after pleading guilty to one charge of forgery. Four other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

In July 2018, the Singaporean woman made a document purporting to be a press release by the AGC communications unit, titled “Filing for Substantive Application for Order of Committal Against Ch’ng Lye Beng and Others”, the court heard.

Besides this, there were four other fraudulent court documents purporting that a civil suit was being filed against the Mr Ch'ng, a prosecuting officer who worked at MOM.

Tham then uploaded the fraudulent documents on her Facebook page in a publicly accessible post titled “AGC Knows What You Did Last Summer”.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Ryan Lim said that Tham did so to injure Mr Ch’ng’s reputation, as she was unhappy with his handling of her mother’s case.

According to court documents, Mr Ch’ng had presided over four pre-hearing conferences in 2015 after Tham’s mother filed a claim for work injury compensation. The claim was withdrawn on April 2015.

In seeking a fine of S$5,000, DPP Lim said that the prosecution was already seeking a lighter sentence without a jail term in view of the “exceptional” circumstances of the case. A forgery charge would otherwise typically attract a custodial sentence.

Among other things, the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) had found Tham to be suffering from a delusional disorder and that this had contributed to her actions.

In Tham's mitigation plea, her defence counsel M Lukshumayeh said his client has been out of job for the past 10 years and was only gainfully employed about a month ago.

Tham has also been following up at IMH to seek treatment for her mental condition, he added. He asked the court to take into consideration the three periods when Tham was remanded at the IMH for assessment.

She was remanded for more than 11 months in total, the court heard.

Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan agreed that the remand period was substantial and would have been taken into account if a prison term was imposed.

He also noted that Tham has been taking her medication and started afresh with a new job, and thus he did not see a reason to impose a high fine.

For forgery, Tham could have been sentenced to prison for up to four years and fined.