SINGAPORE (The Nation/Asia News Network): An Australian man who conspired with a general practitioner to make fake vaccination records was jailed for 16 weeks on Thursday (April 27).
David Christopher Newton, 44, pleaded guilty to one charge of cheating, with another taken into consideration for sentencing.
Newton, who had not received the Covid-19 vaccine Sinopharm, paid $6,000 to general practitioner Jipson Quah and the doctor’s then-clinic assistant Thomas Chua Cheng Soon to fake vaccination records for himself and his wife.
In December 2021 and January 2022, Quah then injected Newton and his wife, Wonglangka Apinya, 32, with saline solution before submitting the false records of vaccination to the National Immunisation Registry.
Apinya thought she was being injected with the real vaccine.
Newton did not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19, but was offered a job by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and faced difficulty entering Australia because he was not vaccinated.
Newton joined the Telegram chat of anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide in December 2021 and, through it, got Chua’s mobile phone number and contacted him.
On Dec 26, 2021, he asked Chua if he could be certified as having been vaccinated without getting the real vaccine. He also asked if his wife could be certified as being medically ineligible for the vaccine, even though she did not fulfil the vaccination exemption criteria.
Chua later told Quah about this and they came up with a plan to have the couple get mock vaccinations at Quah’s clinic for $6,000.
Newton agreed to this and lied to his wife that he had arranged for them to receive the Sinopharm vaccine.
The couple went to Quah’s clinics on Dec 29, 2021 and Jan 15, 2022, to receive their first and second fake doses.
Newton arranged for the dates of the jabs to be 17 days apart, as he had read on the website of Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority that this was a requirement.
At the clinics, Quah told the couple he would be giving them the Sinopharm vaccine and showed them syringes filled with a liquid before injecting them.
But Newton knew this was a lie and that Quah had actually injected them with saline solution.
Quah submitted the fake vaccination records a few days later to the National Immunisation Registry. They showed both Newton and his wife as being fully vaccinated.
On Thursday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Etsuko Lim told the court that Newton was one of at least 17 patients who were given fake vaccines by Quah.
The prosecution urged the court to jail Newton for 16 to 18 weeks, as the scheme subverted national health measures.
She added that while Newton was the only patient who has been charged in court, the prosecution has not ruled out taking action against the others.
In his judgment on Thursday, District Judge Soh Tze Bian said that Newton had a negative serology test result in September 2021, but a positive one in March 2022.
This meant that it was likely that Newton contracted Covid-19 at some point in that six-month period, possibly after receiving the fake vaccine jabs.
The judge added that it was entirely fortuitous Newton was arrested on Jan 21, 2022, before his false vaccination status was reflected in the TraceTogether application.
Quah, 35, was arrested on Jan 21, 2022, with Chua, 41, and Iris Koh, 47, the founder of anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide.
Quah faces a total of 17 charges, while Chua faces seven charges and Koh, nine charges. They are accused of conspiring to cheat and submit false vaccine records to the Ministry of Health. Their cases are pending.
Quah was suspended in March 2022. He allegedly gave fake Covid-19 jabs to patients, charging them between $1,000 and $1,500. The patients were allegedly injected with saline solution instead of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Quah then allegedly reported them as being vaccinated to the National Immunisation Registry between December 2021 and January 2022.
Quah also allegedly allowed more than 430 patients to take Covid-19 tests remotely, even though this was against the rules at the time.
The Singapore Medical Council had said he put the public at risk, undermining confidence in the medical profession and Singapore’s Covid-19 testing capabilities.
At Newton’s sentencing on Thursday, District Judge Soh said the offender had participated in the criminal conspiracy while being fully aware of the consequences.
He said: “The present case represents an audacious assault on nationwide public health measures – measures which were enacted to contain a worsening public health emergency and which required the honest cooperation of all Singapore residents.
“The sentence imposed must resonate with the public’s shock at the accused person’s brazen fraud on the Health Promotion Board, which threatened to make a mockery of those public health measures.”
For cheating, Newton could have been jailed for up to three years and fined.
