SINGAPORE: A Miss Universe Singapore 2017 contestant was jailed six weeks on Thursday after using her friends' bank card details to make unauthorised transactions.
Ashley Rita Wong Kai Lin, now 27, memorised her friends' bank card numbers and within a span of three months in 2016 spent more than S$2,000 (RM6,100) of their money on expenses such as ride hails, a hotel stay and clothing from online stores.
The e-sportscaster, who has nearly a thousand followers on her Twitch streaming channel, earlier pleaded guilty to four charges under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, with 27 similar charges to be considered during sentencing.
The court heard that Wong had illegally used the bank cards of three friends, although the prosecution proceeded only on charges involving two of them – Andrew Lim, 28, and Kimberly Qwee, 26.
Wong had met Lim after breaking up with her ex-boyfriend. While Lim was in the toilet, she took the wallet he had left on the table and memorised his debit card details.
She then used those details to make 21 payments between August and September 2016, including nearly S$200 at online fashion store Showpo and about S$300 for tickets.
Wong likewise memorised Qwee's debit card details when Qwee had left her card unattended, and used that to make several payments, including one for S$260 to stay at Hotel Clover.
Qwee got suspicious after the payments she tried to make online with her card were rejected because her bank account had insufficient funds. Wong has since returned most of the money to the victims, deputy public prosecutor (DPP) Cheng You Duen said. However, she was unable to make restitution to some merchants after her friends had their transactions cancelled and refunded.
Her lawyer, Christine Low, from law firm Peter Low and Choo said that the degree of premeditation in her case was small.
"She did not take any additional measures to avoid detection and confessed to her wrongdoing when confronted," Low said, adding that this was Wong's first offence and that she had pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity.
In a statement posted on Instagram late last year following media reports about her case, Wong apologised to her friends and thanked them for calling her out, adding that she has been seeking treatment from a psychiatrist
"What I did was completely f***** up," she wrote. "It was the wake-up call that I needed to snap out of the post-break-up pit of depression I was in after being cheated on."
But Wong's own psychiatric expert could not conclude with certainty that she had had a mental disorder during the time of the offence that could have contributed to her committing the acts, DPP Cheng said on Thursday. He argued that her offences involved some degree of planning as it required her to actively memorise several numbers while the victims were away.
Disputing an argument made by the defence, DPP Cheng said investigations showed that she had not admitted her acts to her friends immediately, nor did they reveal any evidence to suggest that the victims remain good friends with her.
DPP Cheng referred to police statements that showed that the three victims did not forgive Wong for her actions and that one of them had cut off contact with her.
Each offence of unauthorised access to computer material for a first-time offender carries a jail term of up to two years or a fine of up to S$5,000, or both. – TODAY ONLINE
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