John Sun, who used to be known as Sng Wee Hock, committed the offences in 2014 when he was the director and practising dentist of WH Dental & Associates clinics. - ST FILE
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): A dentist who made false MediSave claims and induced the Central Provident Fund (CPF) board to deliver S$11,750 to him was given three years and a month’s jail by a judge on Monday (Aug 28).
John Sun, 50, who was convicted in April of seven counts each of cheating and forgery, made the claims linked to seven patients over procedures that were not performed, including foreign body removal (FBR) and autogenous bone graft (ABG).
Sun, who used to be known as Sng Wee Hock, committed the offences in 2014 when he was the director and practising dentist of WH Dental & Associates clinics.
He also forged documents linked to three of the seven patients.
Following a trial, Deputy Presiding Judge Christopher Tan gave Sun a discharge amounting to an acquittal on 10 other similar charges. This means he cannot be charged over the same offences again.
Two other cheating charges were also withdrawn, and he was given a similar discharge over them.
In their submissions, deputy public prosecutors Suhas Malhotra and Gerald Tan said that the forged documents were photographs of radiographs – images produced by equipment such as X-ray machines.
The prosecutors added that the forged photographs were meant to dupe the Ministry of Health into believing that the procedures in the claims had been performed. This was done to cheat the ministry during a professional MediSave audit of Sun’s dental firm, which had branches in Hougang, The Seletar Mall and Punggol Field.
Sun was represented by a team of lawyers from Martin & Partners – Senior Counsel Roderick Martin, Marshall Lim, Gideon Yap and Joshua Tan. Lawyer Daniel Atticus Xu from Exodus Law Corporation was the instructing solicitor.
The prosecutors had earlier told the court that Sun made false MediSave claims for two procedures – FBR and ABG.
They added that the affected patients only wanted implants, which they received. They did not want or consent to any FBR or ABG procedures.
The prosecutors told Judge Tan: “They did not discuss the risks or benefits of procedures with the accused, cost and payment terms were... not discussed, the patients do not recall undergoing any FBR or ABG procedures and none of the patients suffered from any post-operative wounds associated with these procedures.”
Sun also did not perform any preparatory steps, such as capturing images, that were necessary for these procedures, said the prosecutors.
They also said that FBRs are extremely rare and that the National Dental Centre rarely conducts them.
The prosecutors added: “Yet, the accused somehow conducted (multiple) FBR procedures in a single calendar year. There is no evidence in the accused’s records of what the purported foreign bodies removed were, or how they got lodged in the patient’s mouth.”
Two doctors, who were the prosecution’s experts, had said that FBRs are more commonly employed in vehicle trauma accidents where glass becomes lodged in a patient’s mouth.
One of the doctors estimated that the National Dental Centre only saw one non-vehicle trauma foreign body case in the past few years.
The prosecutors said that against the backdrop of this expert evidence, the FBR claims originating from WH Dental were patently false.
Meanwhile, an ABG refers to a procedure involving the harvesting and grafting of the patient’s own bone. In the dental context, an ABG is done to harvest bone from one site and graft it onto an implant site.
The prosecutors said that this is a complex surgery involving bone removal and wounds that had to be closed with stitches.
However, Sun’s affected patients did not recall wounds, pain or swelling following their purported ABGs.
As for his forgery charges, the prosecutors said that the alterations to some of the photo prints are patently fake, adding: “These are palpably poor and amateurish forgeries.”
Sun intends to appeal, and his bail was set at $120,000 on Monday.
