A SINGAPOREAN man was jailed for forging his polytechnic diploma qualifications in an effort to become a fire safety manager despite not completing his educational courses.
According to a report by news portal Today, the 31-year old, Muhammad Rasul Kadir Ali had obtained a fake diploma certificate and academic transcript allegedly issued by a polytechnic from a man only identified as ‘Ravi’ as stated in the court documents.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) V. Jesudevan stated in court that Rasul initially hesitated to commit forgery however, he changed his mind upon hearing that he would earn his qualifications after two years of studying.
The jobseeker then claimed that he lost contact with ‘Ravi’.
On July 8 2020, Rasul had submitted the forged documents for his job application as a fire safety manager to a property management service provider where he had listed two references provided with his own contact numbers in an attempt to legitimize his application.
It turns out that a senior human resource manager was suspicious of the diploma as the fonts used varied from the original polytechnic and her doubts grew as she noticed that the voices Rasul used to impersonate the references during the mandatory phone call sounded very similar.
She then reached out to the polytechnic for further investigation and found that his academic qualifications were a sham.
DPP Jesudevan also said that Rasul knew that the companies would contact his references as part of his background checks therefore he intended to impersonate them by giving good feedback regarding himself to the human resource departments.
Rasul was then arrested charged. He was brought to trial where he pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery by using the falsified documents by passing it off as authentic and attempting impersonation to deceive the human resource manager.
Rasul was then sentenced to three weeks in jail on October 5.
