Earlier today (July 21), Kas Qiu Caiying, 30, a former cashier who worked for NTUC FairPrice supermarket, plaeded guilty to 11 charges of unauthorised access to computer material and was sentenced to eight months’ jail.
Twenty-four other similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Her offences started in July 2018 when she was a cashier at an NTUC FairPrice outlet in Woodlands.
When customers made payment with their cards, she would record down the details.
Then in August 2018, she began working at Selarang Halfway House, where she retrieved the NRIC details of one of the residents and used that information, along with the centre’s duty personnel’s mobile number, to create a user account on the EZ-Link app on her own phone.
Using the credit card details that she had stolen from supermarket customers, she topped up more than 500 transit cards a total of 1,011 times.
She would then seek cash refunds from the cards at the MRT stations.
She was able to steal a total of $41,330.
Mr Josephus Tan and Mr Corey Wong of Invictus Law Corporation, who were Qiu’s defence lawyers, mitigated that she resorted to crime due to professional and familial problems.
They added that she grew up in a dysfuntional family that invalidated her emotions and achievements, in turn resulting in her perceiving life as unfair.
She also grew envious of her co-workers who were financially free and were only working to pass time.
Qiu has since repaid most of the S$41,330.