Singapore—A Filipina woman who was discovered to have submitted a fake diploma and transcript in applying for Permanent Residency (PR) status for herself and her daughter has been sentenced to seven weeks in jail, the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said in a statement on Tuesday (Jan 14).
Thirty-eight-year-old De Luna Noriza Dancel is said to have provided false statements to ICA. She was arrested by ICA officers on October 25, 2017 for the falsehoods indicated in the PR applications she filed for herself and her daughter, Tayde Deevy Rick De Luna, in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
ICA, having performed an internal investigation, discovered that Ms De Luna had no records with the Centro Escolar University in Manila, Philippines. When ICA tried to verify this it was found that Ms De Luna had no record of having enrolled at the university.
The diploma and transcript she had submitted, purportedly from the records office of Centro Escolar University, did not in actuality, come from there.
ICA added in its statement, “ICA takes a very serious view of persons who provide false information or conceal material facts during their applications for any Singapore immigration facility. Any person who has made a false statement in their applications for immigration facilities will be dealt with firmly in accordance with the law. This may include having their immigration facilities deprived or revoked, as provided for under the Constitution and the Immigration Act. For those who have been convicted of an offence, the statuses of their family members will also be reviewed by the ICA.”
Ms De Luna has run afoul of the law in the past. On January 31, 2012, she was given a fine of S$50,000 in default of 20 days’ imprisonment due to charges for operating an Employment Agency without a license.
And in 2013, a 56-year-old Singaporean and the sole proprietor of Sunlight Employment Agency, Tay Lian Huay, pleaded guilty to one charge of making a work pass application on behalf of Ms De Luna.
Ms Tay became the first person in Singapore to have been convicted of making work pass applications on behalf of an unlicensed agency. She was found guilty under the revised Employment Agencies Act (EAA) and fined $30,000 in default of one month’s imprisonment.
Ms De Luna had asked Ms Tay for assistance in handing in 16 work pass applications from August 25, 2011 to October 27, 2011, to which Ms Tay was able to do using her access to the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) work pass application system.
For every application that went through, Ms Tay received S$200. For unsuccessful applications, she received S$30.
MOM said in an advisory in 2013 “Under the EAA, it is an offence for any EA personnel of a licensee to submit a work pass application to the Controller of Work Passes on behalf of any person who has not obtained an EA licence. Those convicted face a fine not exceeding $80,000 or a jail term not exceeding two years or both.
In addition, the errant EA will have its licence revoked. An EA which has its licence revoked will also be barred from operating an EA in future.” -/TISG