After forging four certificates of competence (COCs) and submitting them to the Ministry of Health (MOH), a physician who specializes in aesthetic services was given a four-month jail sentence on Tuesday, July 29.
Two of the COCs were related to workshops that Bernard Tan Wen Sheng had not yet attended, and he committed the offenses in order to obtain a license for his medical practice.
Tan, 35, entered a guilty plea to two counts of forgery and one count of providing a public servant with false information on June 30. His sentencing took into account two additional forgery charges.
District Judge James Elisha Lee emphasized in his sentencing that the MOH regulatory framework is intended to protect public health and safety.
The judge further declared that Tan had demonstrated a flagrant disrespect for the ministry's regulatory procedure and had intentionally committed offenses against MOH, a public institution.
COCs are an essential component of the regulatory process that MOH uses to determine whether to approve an application for a clinic license, the court heard in previous proceedings.
In June, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ariel Tan informed the court that he had made the decision to open his medical practice, Bay Aesthetics Clinic, at Marina Bay Link Mall by February 2023 at the latest.
He then applied to MOH for a clinic license.
According to court documents, an applicant needs to pass the necessary exam and attend a workshop for a specific aesthetic procedure in order to receive a COC. The COC would then be issued by the Aesthetic Dermatology Education Group (ADEG).
On Feb 20, 2023, a manager from MOH's Hospital Ambulatory Care and Research Regulation Department conducted an inspection of Tan's clinic via video link.
She sent him an email the following day requesting COCs for three services: chemical peels, fillers, and injections of botulinum toxin.
After realizing that he lacked some of the necessary COCs, Tan made the decision to modify his wife's COCs in order to create his own.
His wife, who had passed the exams in 2017, received the four COCs he had obtained.
Chemical peels, fillers, botulinum toxin injections, and assisted lasers or intense pulsed light for hair removal (IPL) were the four procedures for which the certificates were associated with workshops.
Tan then covered his wife's details on the COCs by placing his name on each one after printing it out on paper in a font size comparable to hers.
Then, with his name neatly above the line where the workshop attendee's name was written, he scanned each certificate individually.
Tan emailed the manager the scanned copies of the fake certificates at 2:30 pm on February 21, 2023.
DPP Tan informed the court that although Tan had lost the COCs for fillers and botulinum toxin injections in 2017, Tan had actually participated in workshops involving these procedures. The prosecutor added that at the time, he had not participated in workshops that involved chemical peels and IPL hair removal.
The manager emailed Tan again on February 27, 2023, to inform him that ADEG was unable to locate any documentation of his alleged attendance at the last two workshops.
She then requested an email confirmation from ADEG confirming his attendance at the workshops, or the original COCs.
The following day, Tan emailed to confirm that he had taken the classes in May 2017.
On March 13, 2023, the application was finally accepted, and Tan was permitted to offer services that included fillers and injections of botulinum toxin.
After attending workshops for them in April of that year, he offered IPL and chemical peel hair removal services.
He was charged in court in 2024, although court records did not reveal how his offenses were discovered.
Tan is scheduled to start serving his sentence on August 15 and his bail was set at S$20,000 on Tuesday, July 29.
