A 37-year-old woman named Su Qin has been fined S$5,000 (about Rs 3.26 lakh) by a Singapore court for forging a medical certificate to get hospitalisation leave from her job as a software developer. Originally from China, Su was under significant emotional and financial stress because of her mother’s worsening health. This pressure led her to make the poor decision to forge the document.
Su altered a genuine medical certificate she had from a previous visit. She changed the hospital’s name to St. Luke’s Hospital and modified the dates to show she was hospitalised from 23 March to 3 April, 2024. She also blurred the QR code on the certificate. By doing this, Su was able to take nine days off work and received S$3,541.15 in salary during that period.
Her forgery was uncovered when she resigned from her job on 4 April. The head of human resources noticed the certificate looked suspicious and tried to scan the QR code, which was broken. This raised further doubts, and when Su was asked to provide the original certificate, she submitted another fake one. This confirmed the forgery, leading to her dismissal and her employer filing a police report.
In court, Su pleaded guilty to forgery. Her lawyer explained that Su didn’t act out of malice but was overwhelmed by the stress of her situation. She was not only dealing with her mother’s health problems but was also under financial pressure, as she had been paying for all of her mother’s medical expenses on her own.
Su had moved to Singapore at 18 after receiving a government scholarship. She used Adobe Photoshop to forge the medical certificate for her company, ETC Singapore SEC. On top of that, after receiving a call from a hospital in China about her mother’s critical condition, Su falsely claimed that her mother had passed away to extend her time in China, even going as far as to forge a death certificate.
Despite the seriousness of the forgery, Su was only fined instead of being sent to prison. Under Singapore law, forgery can lead to up to four years in jail. However, her fine allows her the possibility of returning to China to care for her mother. The prosecution had pushed for a fine between S$5,000 and S$6,000 because of the severity of the offence. Su’s lawyer had asked for leniency, arguing that Su was desperate and needed rest.
Su has since lost both of her jobs and is currently unemployed.
