Former FairPrice cashier jailed for using stolen credit card details to cash out close to S$40,000

• ​Woman jailed eight months for illegally obtaining S$41,330 through unauthorised card transactions
• While working as a cashier in NTUC FairPrice supermarket, she copied details of customers’ credit cards 
• She used the information to top up transit cards and later cashed out the amounts
   

SINGAPORE — A supermarket cashier obtained a total of S$41,330 through 1,011 unauthorised transactions, using information she obtained from customers’ credit and debit cards. 

On Tuesday (July 21), Kas Qiu Caiying, 30, pleaded guilty to 11 charges of unauthorised access to computer material and was sentenced to eight months’ jail. 

Twenty-four other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing. 

The court heard that her offences started around July 2018 when she was working as a cashier at an NTUC FairPrice supermarket outlet on Woodlands Avenue.

When customers handed over their credit or debit cards for payment, she would record the details down on a plastic bag. 

When she was done with her work shift, she would transfer the details into a notebook and dispose of the bag. 

In August 2018, after she started working as an operations executive at the Selarang Halfway House, Qiu managed to retrieve the National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) details of one of the residents through an office computer. 

She used that information and the centre’s duty personnel's mobile phone number to create a user account on the mobile application of transport card issuer EZ-Link, which she had installed on her personal phone. 

Using the stolen credit and debit card details she collected from supermarket customers earlier, she managed to top up various transit cards with amounts ranging from S$10 to S$100 through the user account that she had created. 

Between August and December that year, Qiu topped up more than 500 transit cards a total of 1,011 times using details from 34 credit and debit cards.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Tan Ben Mathias said that Qiu would then seek cash refunds from the cards at various MRT stations and dispose of the cards thereafter. 

In all, she was able to obtain a total of S$41,330, which was deposited into her bank account.  

Qiu’s defence lawyers, Mr Josephus Tan and Mr Cory Wong of Invictus Law Corporation, said in mitigation that their client had resorted to crime due to a series of professional and familial problems that resulted in her longing for both financial and personal independence.

Referring to Qiu’s psychiatric report, the defence lawyers said that she grew up in a “dysfunctional family” that invalidated her emotions and achievement, which resulted in her perceiving life as “unfair”.

They said that this sense of unfairness was further perpetuated at work when she felt penalised for “adhering strictly to the rules” instead of being rewarded for her efforts. 

She also grew envious of the financial freedom of some of her co-workers at the halfway house who were just working to “pass time”, the lawyers added. 

Qiu has since restituted most of the S$41,330.

For each charge of unauthorised access to computer material, she could have been fined up to S$5,000 or jailed up to two years, or both.