Senior Member
Total Posts: 238 |
http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/news/ story/0,2276,8369,00.html
Check out this article about a guy who lied about his credentials.
IMHO, NTU should take back the degree he earned too.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
Amazing how he got away with it for so long! It's not just one lie but a whole labyrinth of elaborate lies!
Furthermore, mr Dennis Lee is employed by the government! He's the chief technology officer of Elipva, parent company is Singapore Technologies Telemedia, and who is the Sing Tech's chief? Ho Ching!
How come his employers never verify his credentials? After all he's not some small employee or programmer.. he's the Chief Technology Officer leh!
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Newbie
Total Posts: 38 |
wow that 's bad!!! he thought he can pull off this stunt... A bad publicity to local industries.. 
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1091 |
One of Mr Dennis Lee's more outlandish and bolder claims was that he was a founding member of the W3 consortium in 1993 (which is pretty impressive given that he graduated from NTU only in 1995).
And the Straits Times, which ran an article on his AI achievement, is suppose to be a dependable source of information?
Methinks that the BT has just made the Strait Times, its sister publication, a laughing stock.
This message was edited by ingersoll2 on 20 May 2001 01:40 AM
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
I absolutely agree!!!! 
But you must give it to Mr Lee for his ingenuity at being able to pull off such a fantastic hoax for so long!
So what do you think is the punishment for his crime? I'm no lawyer but as far as I understand it, he has certainly committed a major crime by claiming false credentials.
Eg, if you apply for a job and lie about your credentials, you can be charged in court for deceit.
This message was edited by guitar on 20 May 2001 03:28 AM
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 238 |
There are grounds for a civil suit against Lee if the company wants to take it up. However, there is no crime committed, i.e. he did not give signed false info to the govt, or did he lie or cheat anyone outside of his employer, or did he give oath on his credentials at a commissioner of oaths. His actions make him liable for misrepresentation, nothing more. However, he will have to serve a life sentance of people remembering him for who he is. I doubt Singapore govt will grant him a change of name after this...
And why does everybody keep calling him Mr? He's just a kid; personally I'd want to check his certificate to see if I can really call him Mister. Might be another false claim
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 212 |
Funkygrad ran a article of his here..
http://www.funkygrad.com/basics/basics-s tyle1.htm
check it out.
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 238 |
quote:
Originally posted by guitar:
How come his employers never verify his credentials? After all he's not some small employee or programmer.. he's the Chief Technology Officer leh!
<
As founder of the company, his credentials would never be verified; dot.coms don't usually keep tabs on their own directors. Also, at higher executive levels its usually considered to be rude to ask for proof of qualifications. You are taken at "face value" and on gentlemanly honour. After all, has anyone asked LKY to show his double first Uni cert?  But we trust it exists right?
quote:
"Since we know so little about quantum computing, I do not consider it in this discussion. I started thinking about the abstract definition of life 2 years ago, when I published a paper in Reviews of Modern Physics about the possibility that life could survive for ever in a cold expanding universe.
I proved to my own satisfaction that survival is possible for a community of living creatures using only a finite store of matter and energy. Then, two years ago, Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman, friends of mine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, sent me a paper with the title "Life, the Universe, and Nothing".
They say flatly that survival of life for ever is impossible. They say that everything I claimed to prove in my Reviews of Modern Physics paper is wrong. I was happy when I read the Krauss-Starkman paper.
It is much more fun to be contradicted than to be ignored. In the two years since I read their paper, Krauss and Starkman and I have been engaged in vigorous arguments, writing back and forth by E-mail, trying to pokes holes in each others' calculations."
One of the best BS I've seen in a while 
Wasn't it Hitler who said The bigger the lie, the more believable it is?
People tend to think "What he's saying is so fantastic, it must be true, nobody would be crazy to lie about something like that!"
Most of the PhD's I know don't even write in this style; you need serious seniority to write shit like this. And certainly no CTO of a dot com writes like this....
This message was edited by balgair on 20 May 2001 05:06 AM
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Member
Total Posts: 57 |
i think a substantial amt of such pple exist due to advances in
digital imaging and communication and of coz the internet
remember a few years back, where we have the uncertified doctor
in 1 of the hospital...it chills me that it can even penetrate
such profession...
i think a lot need to be done to curb such perverse doings b4 it
spins out of control.........
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Very Senior Member
Total Posts: 837 |
Tsk tsk,...seems to me that he got too carried away with his lies...which led to his inevitable downfall..
Good for him...haha...
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 1091 |
Hmmm... wasn't Mr Lee a member of the YPAP?
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
quote:
Originally posted by balgair:
There are grounds for a civil suit against Lee if the company wants to take it up.
What you wrote might be true... BUT... methinks that the govt will find some way to make him pay and perhaps even spend time behind bars.
Why? Simple fact. He hoodwinked the whole SIngapore, made Sing Tech Telemedia (the parent company) looked like complete idiots. Sure, you don't ask for credentials of Jack Welch but nobody bothered to question how this 29 year old fella (who served NS) was able to achieve so much (including writing 6 books, winning numerous prizes etc) in 4 years since graduation? (if he ever graduated?) Come on! Venture capitalists are supposed to scrutinize their monetary investments!
Most importantly, who runs Singapore Technologies? hehehehe... Also, I read somewhere that Mr Lim Swee Say has been trying to get Dennis Lee to join Young PAP.... even our young and promising minister has been made to look bad!
This message was edited by guitar on 20 May 2001 05:17 PM
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Newbie
Total Posts: 30 |
quote:
From BT:
Formerly known as Sttarfire.com, the 18-month-old elipva has some blue-chip customers including United Overseas Bank, Great Eastern Life, GE Plastics, GK Goh and Prudential Assurance. The company provides 'intelligent' e-business software, competing with such giants as SAP, Oracle and IBM.
I wonder now if Elipva's clients will be checking if their software actually works as well as it is claimed to be. After all Dennis Lee might have falsified some stuff here and there to make it seem that their software is really 'intelligent'.
Ha ha ha, some heads are gonna roll at ST. Didn't hear anything about this guy prior to this but I find it so incredible that he got away with it for so long. If he was really as good as he claimed to be, he would have been outstanding at NTU(provided of course that he DID graduate from there, it could be fake again). And to imagine him exchanging emails with all those 40+ year old academics engaging in debates is so far-fetched!
And quite rightly as someone pointed out here, his style of writing in some articles is so much like an elderly academic. Apparently this guy copied articles from Boston Consulting Group as well. Amazing that no one spotted the difference in writing styles.
I guess someone at ST got caught up with all the internet and dotcom bandwagon of yesteryear....
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
Results of the case:
http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/news/ story/0,2276,9089,00.html?
Excerpt:
THE co-founder and chief technology officer of elipva Ltd, a Singapore Technologies-funded start-up, has been fired after a company probe found he falsified most of his credentials and was guilty of 'elaborate misrepresentation'.
Dennis Lee, 29, had nurtured a reputation as an New Age visionary - until BT lifted the lid on his fraud last week and elipva suspended him pending an inquiry.
elipva, whose parent is ST Telemedia, said in a statement yesterday it has 'terminated the employment of Mr Lee and categorically severed all ties between Mr Lee and the company'.
--------------------------------
Hopefully the reputation of the company, Elipva, isn't too badly damaged.
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 238 |
kudos to the PR officer at elipva that did the fire fighting. As for all of elipva's customer... OF COURSE they will say that elipva is ok.. otherwise they'll be saying their own systems is flawed to right?
The true test is seeing how many new deals elipva closes after this...
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
Yah boy,
I can imagine Elipva's competitors bad-mouthing Elipva all the way when a new contract comes up for grabs...............
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Member
Total Posts: 76 |
On the contary, I don't think it'll affect the product that much if credentials of a company's CTO is in doubt. Forging his credentials does not mean that he has to instigate his staff to forge their works. And a company is not ONLLY make up or led by him. There is the management to speak about, and the rest of the staff? Nobody will be silly enough to compromise the quality of their work?
Therefore, I don't think the saga reflects that their product, in this case, IT solutions are of an inferior quality. However, i think it affects on the overall corporate image of the management though, on why they haven't exercise due diligence to screen their top IT head.
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Ultra Senior Member
Total Posts: 2559 |
hope u r right snowyz
more than 100 jobs at stake i gather..
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Senior Member
Total Posts: 238 |
Logically you are correct, but in this IT sector when everything is super competitive and you are the one who has to put your name (and job) on the line, would you do it? Lets say you have several possible vendors (including)a company that is similar in quality (and there are a lot out there), and you picked Lee's company.
If anything goes wrong, all your enemies in the company (and those one rung under you) are going to be using that one decision to bring you down so that they can rise up. They will use "It was so obvious, but he didn't take it into account, he must be incompetent". First rule of company politics: Protect your own backside. If you had chosen any other company, you would have just made a bad decision, but choose this one and you give all those with a dagger behind your back an extra helping hand....
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Newbie
Total Posts: 31 |
A little ironic really...  here, we are told that we are judged on our merit, and that what degrees or awards we have forgotten take us only as far as the first day at work.
If it can be said that this Dennis Lee did not really win his awards or obtain his miraculous string of degrees, it must follow that he does not possess the calibre he professes to have.
If that is the case, how is it that no one has ever questioned him on his supposed lack of calibre? At least there should be gossips flying about, which should alert the higher management to his lacklustre performance, if he is to be compared with the 'standard' he has set for himself,  and most probably trigger off an internal investigation which should have occured instead of a newspaper's private effort to check his credentials.
Oh well, if this is how the government, considering that ST Telemedia is part and parcel of a government company, then perhaps it is not really true after all that part of the mindset of our bureacracy involves assessing the individual based on his worth.
Oh yes, doesn't the guy have any family and friends who knows what he is doing outside? If they do, did they ask him to desist from the fraud, or were they in the dark as well?
To say the truth, I think the guy looks quite handsome. It's just sad that he did not attempt to make an honest living with what he had. If he had indeed tried to make an honest buck, I'm sure he would have been at an advantage, since looks count too in the corporate world.
So sad 
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posted
Sat 19 May 2001 07:38 PM
posted
Fri 25 May 2001 09:51 AM