Leaked recordings and screenshots accusing Night Owl Cinematics co-founder Sylvia Chan of verbally abusing employees triggered Singapore's biggest influencer scandal, an implosion that played out across October 2021 and destroyed one of the country's most successful creator companies. The material, posted on October 7 by the anonymous Instagram account @sgcickenrice, included claims that Chan had fostered a toxic workplace culture and had sought an exit strategy for talent Samantha Tan, and it landed in the middle of Chan's already rancorous divorce from co-founder Ryan Tan.
The commercial consequences were immediate. Colgate and MILO cut ties with the company, unwilling to be associated with the allegations, and the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices began looking into the workplace claims. Night Owl Cinematics initially hit back on October 11, calling the allegations a massive smear campaign and insisting it provided a safe space for developing employees. But the leaked audio, in which Chan could allegedly be heard berating staff, proved impossible to contain. On October 13, Chan apologised in a statement, acknowledging she had not lived up to the standards expected of her, and she was removed from the company's artiste line-up, though Samantha Tan publicly pointed out inaccuracies in her account.
The saga had all the ingredients of a national obsession: a celebrity CEO, a collapsing marriage, leaked audio, and household-name sponsors fleeing. Founded in February 2013 after a failed restaurant venture, Night Owl Cinematics had grown from wedding videography into a YouTube powerhouse on the strength of viral hits like Shit Singaporean Girlfriends Say, with Chan running the business side while Ryan Tan handled creative work. Its divorce-era collapse felt, to many fans, like the end of an era for Singapore's creator economy.
What the public did not know was that the saga had triggered a 12-month criminal investigation. Chan later revealed on her podcast Dirty Mess Free that she had been investigated by police over claims including embezzlement, describing the terror of defending herself at a police station against what she said were more than a hundred open cases, from which she was eventually cleared. She went on to join Gushcloud International as regional head of media strategy and began training as a life coach. Ryan Tan resigned from the company in January 2022, and Night Owl Cinematics, once the undisputed king of Singapore YouTube, faded into a cautionary tale about the distance between a brand's on-screen warmth and its off-screen reality.