Ex-employee accuses AI startup of asking Malaysian staff to pose as Singaporeans, firing workers without pay

SINGAPORE: A Singaporean’s account of unfair dismissal at an allegedly troubled Singapore startup has gone viral, with commenters attempting to identify the company and its leadership based on the allegations.

The post, published on the r/Singapore subreddit by u/bwfiq, paints a picture of what the writer called a “depraved, petty, and plain delusional” workplace led by a CEO with grand ambitions but questionable management practices.

According to the former employee, they joined the company last year after it positioned itself as a business aiming to “revolutionise the media industry”. The reality, they claimed, was far less impressive.

“The first red flag I saw was when I realised that, despite the CEO’s grandiose dreams, the company is really just a ChatGPT wrapper consultancy, and not a good one,” the Redditor wrote.

The employee then listed a string of incidents that they said took place during their time at the company.

Among them were claims that the entire company was sent to Kuala Lumpur for an event, only for management to underbudget meal expenses and ask team leaders to cover the shortfall themselves. The Redditor also alleged that Malaysian employees were given Singapore phone numbers and instructed to “pretend to be Singaporeans” when speaking with clients.

The post further accused management of ignoring sexual harassment complaints while promoting the alleged perpetrator because he was considered hardworking.

Other allegations included stealing data from vendors and reselling it, as well as deliberately assigning work at around 5.30 pm so employees would be forced to stay late.

But it was the company’s HR arrangement that appeared to leave the strongest impression on the former employee.

According to the post, the CEO’s wife served as the company’s part-time head of HR. The Redditor claimed the pair saw “nothing wrong” with the arrangement, despite what they described as a blurring of personal and professional boundaries.

The employee recounted an incident where the company allegedly lost its website domain after payment reminders linked to the CEO’s wife’s personal email account went unanswered.

“The credit card used for that expired, and she ignored the repeated warnings sent to her to update it, so one evening, we lost the entire website, irretrievably,” the Redditor wrote.

The loss of the domain allegedly caused the company’s email systems to fail immediately.

The employee said they spent the entire night migrating the business to a new domain to keep operations running.

“I worked through the night to migrate everything to a new domain so that business could continue as normal,” they wrote.

Rather than receiving thanks, however, the employee claimed they were criticised for repeatedly trying to contact the CEO’s wife to obtain two-factor authentication access needed for the migration.

The story ended with what the Redditor described as a final insult.

“Guess how he thanked me? By firing me and my entire team, a week later.”

The former employee also alleged that they never received their final month’s salary.

The post quickly attracted hundreds of reactions, with several commenters claiming the story sounded familiar.

One commenter, who said they had previously worked at the same company, alleged that high staff turnover had become routine.

“This company had seen through complete overhaul of the team members before … a few times,” the commenter wrote.

According to the former employee, management blamed departing workers rather than examining its own practices.

“The CEO and his wife don’t think that it’s a management problem and deemed the consultants ‘low energy’ and to find a new batch who would follow his vision.”

The commenter also described what they called mandatory “vision” sessions for new hires.

“Every person who has newly joined the company in 2026 would have a vision session with the CEO to hear him preach about his grandiose dream,” they wrote.

The same commenter alleged that new staff were discouraged from speaking to employees who were serving notice periods.

“They also told the newly joined people to not mix with the ones who are leaving.”

The commenter added that many Singapore-based employees had been retrenched while operations expanded in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“Singapore clients requested for Singapore team but management told a Malaysian team member to fake being a Singaporean and just do the account,” the commenter alleged.

The commenter also accused management of disregarding Malaysian public holiday requirements, claiming employees were often expected to follow Singapore’s holiday calendar instead.

“They don’t want to follow local laws and CEO think he is above law because he has a lot of lawsuits against him and he said he is not scared.”

A second commenter alleged that they had also worked at a startup where promised salaries failed to materialise despite management spending money on regional events.

“The following month, I didn’t get any money (a lot of us didn’t),” the commenter wrote, adding that staff were expected to work until 1 am on a daily basis.

Several Reddit users urged the original poster to pursue legal remedies.

“Failure to pay CPF is an offence. U can screw him over on that,” one commenter wrote.

Another encouraged the employee to escalate the matter further.

“Don’t forget to report them to CPF Board as well. Failing to pay salary and trying to skip out on CPF is basically a surefire way to get Ah Kong to come down hard on them.”

Although the original poster did not identify the company involved, numerous commenters speculated that the allegations referred to a particular media-tech firm and its CEO. The Independent Singapore has contacted the firm for comment.