Former DBS officer jailed for illegally accessing and leaking customer details
A former DBS officer was sentenced to 16 weeks’ jail on Monday for accessing customer details without authorisation and disclosing them to others.
Liong Yan Sin, 32, pleaded guilty to 10 charges under the Computer Misuse Act for accessing details of customers without authorisation, and six charges under the Banking Act for disclosing customer details to his friends.
Another 42 charges, including one for cheating, were taken into consideration for sentencing.
Liong was employed by DBS as a collections officer from July 2016 to December 2018.
He was given access to the customer information system, which allowed him to retrieve customer details, as part of his job scope.
It was made clear to him when he joined DBS that he was not to access customer details outside the scope of his duties.
But from May to December 2018, he made many unauthorised searches on the system for customer details.
The court was told that he did so because he was curious about customers whose names he had chanced upon in online forums or belong to his friends or relatives.
His co-accused are Dinath Silvamany Muthalliyar and Ang Kok How.
Dinath had worked at DBS with Liong as a collection officer before moving to the Ministry of Manpower as a levy administration manager.
From June 2018, Dinath asked Liong about the salary details of his colleagues at MOM to compare them with his own.
Liong disclosed the salary details of five people to Dinath from June to November 2018.
Ang and Liong were acquaintances who gambled, drank and played basketball together.
They were also mutually acquainted with a woman known as Kelly, who had borrowed money from Ang to play poker.
She owed him about $23,000 in September 2018 when she became uncontactable.
Liong used the DBS system to find Kelly’s customer details, which he then sent to Ang via WhatsApp.
DBS lodged a police report in December 2018.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran said that while none of the customers whose details were disclosed reported harassment or intimidation, Liong had abused his position and breached the trust placed on him.
Dinath and Ang’s cases are still before the courts.
For each charge of unauthorised access to customer details, Liong could have been jailed for up to two years and fined up to $5,000.
For each charge of unauthorised disclosure of customer details, he could have been jailed for up to three years and fined up to $125,000.
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now
