Exclusive | Mikhy Farrera Brochez, American man at heart of Singapore’s HIV data scandal, ran Hong Kong centre for special needs children
- Brochez leaked details of 14,200 people with HIV in Singapore after serving jail time for fraud and drug-related offences there and being deported
- The 34-year-old, who used fake credentials to obtain teaching jobs, is listed as head of a Hong Kong education centre charging HK$8,000 per assessment
He is now in the United States, where he appeared in court in Winchester, Kentucky, on February 18 to face charges of criminal trespass on his mother’s property.
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Guia Education’s website carries a photograph of Brochez and lists his credentials as “APA, APS, MCollT, MS DPSY, DipED”. APA refers to the American Psychological Association and APS to the American Physiological Society. It also lists several other staff members.
“We envision a society where each child, irrespective of background or ability, receives an affordable, easily accessible, world-class education in a compassionate and inclusive environment,” the site says.
Created in December 2009, the site was last altered in February 2015. Guia Education also has a Facebook page that has not been updated since April 2016.
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The Guia Education website says it has an office on the 16th floor of Island Place, King’s Road No. 500 in North Point but when the Post visited the address, there was only a low-rise shopping centre there.
There is a 29-floor office building, Island Place Tower, at nearby No 510, but there was no Guia Education office there. Two people working in companies on the 16th floor said they had never heard of it.
There are no corporate filings for Guia Education in Companies Registry records, suggesting the centre is not a company in Hong Kong.
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It is not known if the centre had any clients, but the website claims that Guia Education also ran the Island Development Centre for gifted children and children with special needs, catering to more than 130 special needs children and their families each year.
Hong Kong barrister Albert Luk Wai-hung said Brochez could have committed fraud and violated the trade descriptions ordinance if he used fake qualifications to sell services to parents.
“That is because you were telling your clients you had such qualifications while you actually did not,” he said.
The Guia Education website quotes HK$7,500 for a “development assessment” by a speech therapist and an occupational therapist lasting up to two hours, which it says is for all children but especially those suspected of having developmental delays or other disorders.
It also quotes HK$8,000 for a “diagnostic assessment” to comparatively measure a child’s educational strengths and weaknesses.
The website claims that all its clinicians were “registered psychologists with the Hong Kong Psychological Society and/or the American Psychological Association” but neither Brochez nor any of the other eight staff mentioned on the site appear on either body’s database of members.
Messages sent to the three email addresses listed on the website bounced back, with auto replies saying: “Address not found”.
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Dr Alex Chan Chi-keung, an assistant professor at Shue Yan University’s department of counselling and psychology, said it is not uncommon for people with questionable credentials to practise educational psychology in Hong Kong.
This is because the government lacks regulation in this area, and there are numerous credentials, societies and tests.
“Misdiagnosis in assessments may have long-term consequences on children,” he said. “It may give false hope to parents who think that their children are gifted. It can even affect children’s brains if they are misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and given medication.”
A ‘child prodigy’?
Brochez was in his mid-20s when he moved to Singapore in 2008 – a year after meeting Ler – and obtained an employment pass to teach in a polytechnic.
Explaining his array of impressive academic credentials, he told a Singapore newspaper in 2010 that he was a gifted child who could read, write and speak fluent Hebrew, Spanish and English by the age of three.
After his arrest in Singapore, British online newspaper The Independent quoted the British Psychological Society as saying his mother’s name was not on its register of psychologists affiliated to any academic institution in the UK.
Brochez lived in Singapore with Ler until his arrest in 2016. He was jailed for 28 months for several offences, including lying to the government about his HIV status and using fake degrees.
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Ler now faces various charges himself, including one under the Official Secrets Act for failing to take reasonable care of HIV patients’ confidential information. He is also accused of helping Brochez conceal his HIV status from the authorities by submitting false blood test results.
The source who told the Post about Brochez’s Hong Kong past recalled meeting him a few times socially in Singapore and said the American came across as “a complete liar”.
He found Brochez’s résumé to be incredible for someone so young, but when he started asking questions about the places he claimed to have graduated from, Brochez cut him off and “that was the end of the friendship”.
“In addition to all the fake educational credentials, he claimed he had worked for the (Israeli spy agency) Mossad. The stories just didn’t add up,” the source said.
“He seemed ridiculous. One time, he was reading a novel at a cocktail party. The next time I saw him, he was very obnoxious, screaming and throwing people in the pool.”
Additional reporting by Bhavan Jaipragas