SINGAPORE — While working as a human resource officer at a company here, Koh Pek Keang unlawfully kept a database of employees' personal details in her own personal computer.
SINGAPORE — While working as a human resource officer at a company here, Koh Pek Keang unlawfully kept a database of employees' personal details in her own personal computer.
Six years after she left the company, Koh still had the database and used the details of 54 people to deceitfully redeem packs of face masks distributed for free via vending machines put up by Temasek Foundation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday (Aug 23), the 44-year-old permanent resident from Malaysia was jailed for 16 weeks after pleading guilty to one count each of unlawfully retaining personal information and cheating.
The court heard that Koh had handled personal information of employees in a company called G-Tech Engineering as part of her job.
However, after leaving the company in 2014, she retained this information in her personal laptop, for reasons that were not mentioned in court.
When a nationwide distribution of free mask kits via vending machines was carried out in November and December 2020, she decided to redeem more mask kits than she and her family members were allowed, because she did not want to spend money to buy them for her family, the court heard.
She took plastic bags to Clementi Community Centre at about noon on Nov 30, 2020, and keyed in the identification numbers of her ex-colleagues to redeem extra mask packs.
Each pack, valued at S$12, contained two masks and three filters. The packs she took that were beyond her quota had a total value of S$648, court documents showed.
In seeking a total sentence of four months and two weeks’ jail, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jeremy Bin said that the number of individuals whose information Koh had unlawfully retained was large.
The amount of personal details of each individual was “wholly sufficient” for Koh to have carried out identity fraud should she have wished to do so, he added.
The offence was also committed during a time when Covid-19 was still relatively new, and the Government had given out free masks as a response to shortages before that.
In pleading for a fine instead, defence lawyer Tan Wei Chieh of law firm Prestige Legal said that Koh had foolishly thought she did not want “the free masks to go to waste” because the personnel whose information she had used were foreigners not residing in Singapore.
He also said that she did not commit the offences to make profit.
Koh was suffering from depression at the time, having faced life stresses as a sole breadwinner for her family in Malaysia and her children in Singapore, he added.
Mr Tan also argued for leniency in sentencing since the Covid-19 peak here had subsided, and his client was “very, very remorseful” of her actions.
In reply, DPP Bin stressed that the masks, while free for the public, were paid for by Temasek Foundation, the philanthropic arm of state investment firm Temasek Holdings.
He said Koh's claim that she only redeemed masks of foreigners who were not in Singapore was "provably untrue", given that several police reports were made by both Singaporeans and foreigners who were unable to redeem their masks after Koh had redeemed them using their identification numbers.
DPP Bin also noted that a psychiatric report on Koh — which Mr Tan submitted to the court only after the judge's prompting — did not mention any contributory or causal link between Koh’s depressed state and the offences.
The prosecutor also pointed out that a cheating offence carries a mandatory jail sentence.
Asked by Senior District Judge Bala Reddy if he could cite any legal precedent in his plea of a fine in lieu of the mandatory jail sentence, Mr Tan did not offer any and pleaded for leniency again.
In passing his sentence, the judge said that he generally agreed with the prosecutor’s submissions.
He took into consideration the medical report as an indication of Koh’s general condition during the offences, though he stressed that the report did not indicate any link between her condition and her criminal conduct.
The judge agreed to a request by Koh to begin her sentence on Sept 13 in order to finalise some work-related matters.
For obtaining personal details of others without consent, Koh could have been jailed up to three years or fined up to S$10,000, or both.
Those convicted of cheating can be jailed up to 10 years and can also be fined.
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