Woman fined for using company clients' personal data to redeem Temasek Foundation face masks

SINGAPORE: A finance and relationship manager at an investment company misused the access she had to clients' personal data in order to redeem free mask packs given out by the Temasek Foundation to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thai national and Singapore permanent resident Pantila Pakemethanan, 45, was fined S$7,000 for her offences on Friday (Feb 25).

She pleaded guilty to a charge each of cheating and illegally obtaining personal information, with another two charges taken into consideration.

The court heard that Pantila worked for Chartered Investment Managers and was given access to the personal data of the company's clients, including NRIC numbers.

She needed such data to perform work tasks such as opening and closing bank accounts for the clients. 

In October 2020, Pantila used the NRIC numbers of five Japanese nationals, who were also Singapore permanent residents, to collect five MaskSafe DET30 masks issued by the Temasek Foundation. She had illegally obtained the information via her access to company records.

The foundation had stocked its vending machines nationwide with masks that Singapore residents could redeem by keying in their NRIC or FIN numbers.

Pantila thought the Japanese nationals, who were her company's clients, would not collect the masks, the court heard.

She took the masks in order to send them to a person who claimed the masks would be given to elderly people in need of them. In exchange, the person said they would provide an equivalent number of an earlier batch of white masks to Pantila.

In February 2021, Temasek Foundation announced the release of a blue MaskPlus Livinguard masks, restocking its vending machines across the island with the Swiss company-produced masks.

On Mar 3, 2021, Pantila again accessed her company's records at its Collyer Quay office and copied the NRIC numbers of the five Japanese nationals to a piece of a paper.

Later that night, she went to a mask vending machine near her home in Ang Mo Kio and keyed in the NRIC numbers of the clients, causing the machine to dispense five MaskPlus Livinguard masks.

Two days later, a family member of one of the clients lodged a police report. Pantila later admitted taking the mask packs. She said she had intended to give them to elderly people but had not yet done so. The five masks were recovered.

The prosecutor sought a week's jail for the cheating charge and a "short" jail term for the charge of illegally obtaining personal information. He said the cheating offence was committed against a public institution, and the crimes were difficult to trace and detect.

"Detection was contingent on a report taking place, and thereafter, investigations into the nearby CCTV footage," he said. "Future distribution exercises may be similarly undermined if dishonest people take advantage of the difficulty in detection to break the law for their own purposes."

The prosecutor added that Pantila had misused the trust given to her and "helped herself to the personal data for her own agenda".