Mobile phone shop employee used customer data to illegally pre-register SIM cards

SINGAPORE: A mobile phone shop employee illegally used customer data to pre-register SIM cards, transferred money on a loan shark's instructions and drove without a licence.

Lee Zu Sheng, 28 was sentenced for his myriad crimes on Thursday (Dec 29) to four months and four weeks' jail and a fine of S$30,600. He was also banned from driving for a year.

He pleaded guilty to four charges including unauthorised modification of Singtel's computer system, assisting a loan shark and driving without a licence. Another two charges were taken into consideration.

The court heard that Lee worked for co-accused Glenn Ng Rong Zhen at mobile phone shop 21 Century Enterprise at its outlet at Block 338, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1.

Before issuing a prepaid SIM card from a mobile service provider to a customer, he had to verify the customer's identity against valid and original identification documents for registration.

After this verification, Lee had to register the prepaid SIM card to the customer using a terminal device machine provided by each of the mobile service providers.

The registration process involved scanning the identification document, checking the accuracy of the information captured and scanning the bar code on the prepaid SIM card to link it to the customer's details.

Each machine was linked to the respective mobile service provider's computer system and the registration data would be transmitted to the provider's servers.

Sometime before December 2018, Ng discovered how to exploit the registration process to register additional prepaid SIM cards using customers' personal information without their consent.

This included toggling the machine so he could pre-register two additional prepaid SIM cards with the customer's personal information on top of the SIM card they bought.

After Ng discovered this, he instructed his employees including Lee to discreetly pre-register additional SIM cards for customers at the shop.

They did this for two reasons - to sell the pre-registered prepaid SIM cards at a marked-up price, and to get bonuses and extra commission from the mobile service providers, who had incentive schemes for the registration of more SIM cards.

Lee registered 11 prepaid Singtel SIM cards with the personal information of six people without their consent in this manner.

Separately, Lee also helped a loan shark to make banking transfers in order to wipe clean his own debt.

He transferred at least S$91,000 for the loan shark, known only as James, using two bank accounts.

Lee was caught when another of James' debtors provided police with Lee's bank account number, stating that he had repaid James via bank transfer to this account.

Lee also drove his friend's car along Crawford Street in December 2019 when he did not have a valid driving licence, and was stopped for checks by a traffic police officer.

He said he had been at his friend's house before that, and told his friend he needed the car to buy items. His friend did not know that Lee did not have a valid driving licence.

Prosecutors sought four months and four weeks' jail for Lee, with a fine of S$30,600 and a year's driving ban.

They said criminals exploit the anonymity of prepaid SIM cards to avoid detection. Fraudulently registered prepaid cards have been used to perpetuate criminal activities such as unlicensed moneylending, cheating scams and activities related to gambling and other vices.

Ng was previously sentenced to six months' jail for his role, and his charges spanned 75 victims and 135 SIM cards.