SG man, 37, gets 6-month jail for forging his girlfriend’s previous marriage certificate to keep staying in his HDB rental flat

Summary

• A 37-year-old man was jailed for six months after forging his girlfriend’s previous marriage certificate to keep staying in his HDB rental flat.

• He changed the groom’s name, NRIC number and marriage date before emailing the altered certificate to HDB in September 2023.

• The forgery was discovered in October 2024 when his girlfriend separately applied for an HDB rental flat as a divorcee.

SINGAPORE: A 37-year-old man has been jailed for six months after forging his girlfriend’s old marriage certificate to keep renting an HDB flat.

Muhammad Faizal pleaded guilty to one charge of forgery for the purpose of cheating. He had been told that he needed to prove he was married to remain eligible for the rental flat. Instead, he submitted a doctored marriage certificate claiming he had married his girlfriend, Shin Min Daily News reported (Aug 10).

Divorce changed his eligibility for the rental flat

Faizal had previously lived in a one-room HDB rental flat with his former wife. The couple divorced in December 2021, after which his former wife moved out and was removed from the tenancy agreement.

HDB later told Faizal that he had to prove he was married if he wanted to continue renting the flat. If he couldn’t meet that condition, he would have to apply with a co-applicant under the Joint Singles Scheme.

Faizal didn’t meet the requirements, and HDB issued a notice on Jul 24, 2023, telling him to leave the flat, a situation that left him with two options: find another way to qualify or give up the unit.

He altered his girlfriend’s old marriage certificate

On Sep 5, 2023, Faizal applied to add his girlfriend and her daughter as occupiers of the flat. He claimed that he and his girlfriend were married but couldn’t produce a marriage certificate.

Later that day, he accessed his girlfriend’s phone without permission and found an electronic copy of her marriage certificate from her previous marriage. He then sent the document to himself and used photo-editing software to alter it.

The changes included the groom’s name, NRIC number and marriage date. The following day, he emailed the forged certificate to HDB. The document stated that Faizal and his girlfriend had married on May 25, 2023.

There was one major problem. His girlfriend was still legally married to her previous husband at that time because her divorce hadn’t been finalised yet.

The forged document survived nearly a year

The fake certificate wasn’t discovered immediately. It came to light in October 2024 when Faizal’s girlfriend applied separately for an HDB rental flat.

She applied as a divorcee and declared that she had custody of her daughter. That application prompted further checks by the authorities.

Investigators compared the certificate Faizal had submitted with the original belonging to his girlfriend and her former husband. The documents were almost identical.

The differences were mainly in the groom’s name, NRIC number and marriage date. The comparison exposed the deception. Faizal was subsequently charged and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

A housing problem became a criminal offence

The case shows how a housing eligibility problem can become much more serious when false documents enter the picture.

Faizal had been given a route to deal with his changed circumstances. He could have left the flat or sought housing under the available rules. Instead, he tried to manufacture the document needed to support his claim, which turned a tenancy problem into a criminal case.

There is also an uncomfortable irony here. The document that exposed the lie wasn’t found through the original rental application. It surfaced when his girlfriend later made a separate housing application and declared her actual marital status.

A forged document can look convincing on a screen, but it still has to survive checks against real records. In the end, Faizal didn’t keep his problem from catching up with him. He only added a six-month jail sentence to it.