Daniel Ong & Jamie Teo Charged for Underpaying Employees in Twelve Cupcakes

If you’re the head of a company, and you want to increase your personal revenue, there are a few things you can do:

• raise your employees’ morale in an effort to boost sales
• expand your operations
• come up with a new, attractive product

But one former radio DJ chose a slightly more cruel method: underpaying his employees.

Former DJ Daniel Ong Charged for Underpaying Employees in Twelve Cupcakes

Twelve Cupcakes founders Daniel Ong and Jamie Teo were charged today (29 Dec) for offences under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, after their pastry company underpaid its employees.

According to The Straits Times, Ong and Teo face 24 charges each.

Founded in 2011, Twelve Cupcakes now has 35 outlets across the country.

In 2016, it was acquired for $2.5 million by the Kolkata-based Dhunseri Group.

After the takeover, it was discovered that seven employees, all of whom were S-Pass holders, were being underpaid.

Their fixed monthly salaries ranged from $2,200 to $2,600, but they only received around $1,400 to $2,050.

Six of them, working in customer service and sales roles, were underpaid from December 2016 to September 2018.

One of them was also underpaid their October and November 2018 wages.

As for the remaining employee, a pastry chef, he was underpaid his fixed monthly salary from January 2017 to September 2018.

Changed Tactics to Avoid Detection

Initially, Twelve Cupcakes credited the slashed salaries to the employees’ bank accounts.

But then the company tried something a little more devious.

Instead of underpaying them immediately, the workers were paid their full salary from May 2018 onwards.

The company later told the employees they had to return a portion of the money to the company.

As Ministry of Manpower prosecutor Maximilian Chew said, this shows that Twelve Cupcakes was deliberately trying to conceal a paper trail of its offences and avoid detection.

Chew asserted that the company would have continued underpaying the employees if their offences hadn’t come to light.

Pleaded Guilty to Underpaying Earlier This Month

On 10 Dec, the company pleaded guilty to 15 charges of underpaying its employees in 2017 and 2018.

Fourteen other similar charges will be taken into consideration by District Judge Adam Nakhoda during sentencing, which is expected to take place on 7 Jan next year.

If convicted of underpaying foreign employees, a company may be fined up to $10,000 for each offence.

As for Ong, his case has been adjourned to 26 Jan 2021.

As Chew said in court, Singapore is heavily reliant on foreign employees in several sectors, including the F&B industry.

So it’s incumbent for companies to be held accountable for the welfare of their employees.

“We were not aware of till 2019, but as directors of the company, liable.”

According to an Instagram post by Daniel Ong, he mentioned that he was being “dragged into a case from 2012-2016 where a errant 3rd party agent we used to hire foreign workers submitted documents and salaries we were not aware of till 2019, but as directors of the company, liable.”

Here’s the post:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Daniel Ong (@daniel_ong_singapore)

Jamie Teo has not responded publicly to this.

Featured Image: Instagram (@daniel_ong_singapore & @jmeteo)