SINGAPORE: A former contract worker with DBS was on Friday (Nov 22) jailed for eight months and seven weeks for accessing the bank’s customer information without authority.
Huang Pin Wen, 27, admitted to doing so at the request of an illegal moneylender or bookie on five occasions. Other times, he did so to “show off” to others that he could get the information, the prosecutor said.
Huang faced 122 charges. He pleaded guilty to 13 offences, with the remainder taken into consideration for sentencing.
Huang’s job scope covered the POSB Everyday credit card. His responsibilities involved verifying when DBS customers signed up for the card and checking if their spending qualified them for rebates.
To do this, he was issued a laptop and granted access to DBS’ customer relationship management system, which held customer information.
He was trained in the secrecy of bank customer information and the Personal Data Protection Act, and knew that he was not allowed to access or disclose customer data for non-work purposes.
The court heard that DBS was alerted to the breaches in February 2021, when a customer provided screenshots of a chat with an illegal moneylender, Kenneth Tan.
In the chat dated Dec 7, 2020, Tan claimed it had cost S$450 to pay a DBS employee to perform a search on the customer, who owed Tan money. DBS found that Huang had accessed the customer’s information that day.
DBS suspended Huang and started investigations, which revealed that Huang had accessed the data of 78 bank customers without authority from Apr 7, 2020, to Feb 15, 2021.
When DBS questioned Huang about this, he denied any wrongdoing. The bank terminated his employment in March 2021 and reported him to the police.
Huang started illegally accessing customer profiles on his laptop when he started working from home in the “circuit breaker” period during the COVID-19 pandemic, Deputy Public Prosecutor Eunice Chew said.
He accessed his brother’s girlfriend’s information out of curiosity, and after boasting to his brother’s friend that he could.
He also accessed the data of a friend’s sister and mother as the friend wanted to know their bank account balances to play a prank on them.
The prosecutor said such instances were “less malicious” than when Huang retrieved information for Tan and their mutual friend, an illegal football bookie.
Huang and Tan got to know each other between August and September 2020 through this mutual friend. At a gathering, Tan complained that he was unable to recover money from some borrowers.
Huang told Tan he worked at DBS and could help to check the information of people who owed him money.
On Oct 16, 2020, Tan contacted Huang through the mutual friend and asked for help to check the address and bank account information of a debtor.
Huang searched for the person’s customer profile, took photos on his phone and sent the photos to their mutual friend, who forwarded them to Tan.
Tan then gave the person’s address to debt collectors, who went to the house to demand repayment.
Within a week, Tan passed Huang S$100 to thank him for the information. For this, Huang was given a S$100 penalty that he paid after his conviction on Friday.
Huang continued to help Tan in this way three more times. He also helped their mutual friend, the illegal bookie, get the information of a bank customer who owed him money.
With this information, the bookie knew that the customer had money in his bank account, and he asked someone to demand repayment.
Ms Chew, the prosecutor, sought a jail term of eight months and seven weeks to 10 months and two weeks for Huang.
She said Huang had abused his position as a DBS employee and was “extremely persistent” in his offences, which were very difficult to detect.
Defence lawyer Mumtaj Banu asked for a sentence at the lowest end of the range proposed by the prosecution.
She said Huang committed the offences “out of foolishness” and to impress others, and did not use the customer data for personal gain.
Ms Banu also said the only thing Huang gained out of his offences was the S$100, which was going to be subject to a penalty.
In sentencing, District Judge Ow Yong Tuck Leong said that Huang’s actions had damaged Singapore’s reputation as an internationally respected financial centre.
In 2023, Tan also pleaded guilty to giving Huang gratification of S$100, and was jailed for three weeks.
