SINGAPORE: After finding out his girlfriend had cheated on him, an analyst in a financial services company was upset and could not concentrate on his job.
Unwilling to go to work, the 29-year-old Singaporean forged his grandfather’s death certificate so he could take paid bereavement leave.
Barath Gopal was fined S$4,000 (US$3,000) after pleading guilty to forgery under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act on Wednesday (Feb 5).
Gopal had more than four days of annual leave that he could have taken at the time, the court heard.
But on Nov 8, 2023, he told his team leader that his grandfather had died in his sleep that morning, and asked for bereavement leave.
He was granted three days of bereavement leave until Nov 10, 2023 – the maximum number of days allowed under his company’s policy.
Later that month, Gopal’s company asked him to produce his grandfather’s death certificate to support his leave application.
He lied that he could only get the death certificate after his father returned from India on Nov 27, 2023.
On Dec 7, 2023, Gopal’s team leader instructed him to submit the death certificate by the next day.
Instead, Gopal contacted the stepmother of one of his friends who had died in July 2023.
He asked the stepmother for his friend’s death certificate, lying that he needed it to justify his absence from work as he had attended the funeral.
He received a soft copy of the certificate and uploaded it to a PDF editing app, where he amended the document fields.
He replaced his friend’s personal details with his grandfather’s. He also filled in details like a fake certificate number and date, time and place of death, and cardiorespiratory failure as the cause of death.
On Dec 11, 2023, Gopal submitted a partial image of the forged certificate to his team leader. He deliberately omitted a QR code at the bottom of the document.
Gopal’s team leader could not verify the certificate without the QR code, and asked for a full copy of the document, which Gopal sent to him.
A week later, Gopal resigned from his job as he knew his company would eventually find out the certificate was forged.
He left before his employer was able to confirm the authenticity of the document with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority.
His company suffered a loss of close to S$500 (US$370), which was the income that Gopal received from the paid bereavement leave.
The punishment for forging a death, birth or stillbirth certificate is up to 10 years in jail, a fine of up to S$10,000, or both.
