Contractor jailed for forgery

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General Veers

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Singapore
Mar 24, 2010

Contractor jailed for forgery

<!-- by line --> By Khushwant Singh

A CONTRACTOR, who procrastinated applying for approval from the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), decided to forge the approval notice when his client pressed him for it. Benny Ong Luay Poon, 37, was jailed three months on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to forgery on Monday. A district court heard that Ong was the chief executive officer of construction firm Innosphere Global in 2007 and 2008. The firm was initially engaged by Ms Chng Eng Hong, 53, to renovate her house at Sennett Lane and she gave him a cheque for $28,000 in July 2007.

She later decided to erect a new two-storey bungalow instead and Ong told her that it would take BCA a few months to approve the construction plans. The court was not told why Ong failed to submit the plans for approval but when pressed by Ms Chng in January 2008, he got an architect to fax him an old approval notice for an earlier client. He then put Ms Chng's name and address on it and handed the forged document to her. Noticing that the approval was dated two weeks before she hired him, she reported the matter to the police. Ong told the court that the $28,000 had been spent on materials and neither he nor his company had benefited. The divorcee and father of two could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined.

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