Singaporean woman fined for faking medical leave certificate

A woman in Singapore has been fined approximately $3,600 for forging a medical certificate to obtain nine days of leave from work.

The 37-year-old sought time off due to her health concerns and worries about her mother's wellbeing. However, rather than being transparent with her employer, she resorted to forgery.

To execute the forgery, the woman took an old medical certificate and altered it using Photoshop. She changed the certificate header to that of a nearby hospital and adjusted the date of hospitalization to align with her absence from March 23 to April 3 this year.

She also blurred the QR code on the document, which ultimately led to her downfall. The fraud was uncovered when the head of HR discovered the blurred QR code while checking her leave records. When scanned, the code is directed to a broken link.

Following this, HR contacted the employee for the original certificate. In a further attempt to cover her tracks, the software developer created a new website and generated a new QR code, which she then added to another forged medical certificate submitted on April 8.

The fraudulent certificate was uncovered when the HR department noticed the blurring of the QR code on the document. Additionally, the woman also submitted a fake death certificate for her mother to HR.

The head of her department asked the woman for clarification regarding the forgery, after which she was terminated from her job within 24 hours. Subsequently, HR filed a police complaint, resulting in a total fine of 8,541 Singaporean dollars being imposed on the woman.