An analyst in a monetary service company was unhappy and unable to concentrate on his job after learning his partner had cheated on him.
Willing to go to work, the 29-year-old Singaporean forged his father’s death document so he could get paid loss leave.
After pleading guilty to forgery under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act on Wednesday ( Feb. 5 ), Barath Gopal received a$ 4, 000 ( US$ 3, 000 ) fine.
Gopal’s prosecutor was informed that he could have taken more than four weeks of monthly left at the time.
But he requested grief leave on November 8, 2023, and informed his group leader that his father had passed away in his sleep that morning.
He was granted three times of loss leave until Nov 10, 2023 , – the greatest number of days allowed under his company’s coverage.
Later that month, Gopal’s firm asked him to make his grandfather’s dying certificate to help his leave software.
He lied that his father’s dying document would only be issued after his or her arrival from India on November 27, 2023.
The team leader of Gopal’s death certificate told him to send the death certificate by the following day on December 7, 2023.
Gopal rather reached out to the mother of one of his associates who passed away in July 2023.
He lied to the mother that he needed his brother’s death certificate to support his absence from work because he had attended the funeral and asked for it.
He downloaded a smooth copy of the document and uploaded it to a PDF processing game where he changed the report fields.
He replaced his brother’s personal information with his father’s. Additionally, he included a false certificate number, the date, the time and place of death, and the death’s cause as cardiorespiratory failure.
Gopal gave a partial copy of the forged document to his team president on December 11, 2023. He purposefully omitted a QR code from the document’s base.
Gopal’s team president requested a full copy of the document, which Gopal sent to him, but was unable to confirm it without the QR code.
Gopal quit his job a week later because he was aware that his employer may discover the fake document at some point.
Before the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority could verify the authenticity of the report, he left before his company.
His business lost near to S$ 500 ( US$ 370 ), which Gopal received from the paid loss leave.
The punishment for forging a dying, conception or pregnancy license is up to 10 years in jail, a fine of up to S$ 10, 000, or both.