21-year-old Nizar Syafiq Ismadi pleaded guilty on 19 September to offences that included possession of offensive weapons and a breach under the Computer Misuse Act; while his accomplice, then-23-year-old Mohamed Iskandar Mohamed Ansari, pleaded guilty to theft and an offence under the Computer Misuse Act.
Nizar is expected to be sentenced on 31 October, while his accomplice Iskandar has since been sentenced to 3 months and 5 weeks imprisonment back in February.
Nizar, who held the rank of lance corporal, and Iskandar, who was a corporal, were serving at the 3rd SCDF division at Yishun during the offences, along with the victim, 23-year-old lance corporal Leon Tay. All of them have since completed their national service.
They had stolen Tay’s mobile phone and emptied his bank account, as well as keeping the phone worth $1,149 for themselves, according to The Straits Times.
What happened?
Sometime before August 2022, Iskandar and Nizam were planning to “do something big to Leon”, which the latter understood as meaning making Tay’s life miserable by taking away his mobile phone.
On 1 August 2022 at about 7.30am, Iskandar and Tay were having their 24-hour duty shift at the RSM office, and Tay was about to leave the office at 9am to man the guard room, where he was not allowed to use his phone – Iskandar told him to leave his phone behind in the office.
Tay did as he was told and Iskandar then kept the phone, worth $1,149, for himself.
Tay later returned to the office about 1 hour later and found his phone missing, and Iskandar lied about it when asked, claiming that Tay had already collected it.
Iskandar then told Nizar about what he did and the two of them agreed to sell it to the second-hand phone shop for $600, with Nizar keeping the SIM card.
The phone was later exported out of Singapore, and Tay couldn’t afford to buy himself another phone.
On 5 August 2022, Iskandar pretended to help Tay find his phone by using the Find My Phone app that he had on his own phone.
Iskandar had Tay use his phone to log in to his Gmail account, and he then pressed “show password” and revealed the victim’s login information, before sending him away.
Nizar then downloaded the POSB banking app on his own phone and used Tay’s SIM card in the device.
Iskandar and Nizar then managed to log in to Tay’s bank account and emptied it, transferring $690 into Iskandar’s account via PayNow.
Iskandar then transferred $300 to Nizar before spending the remainder of the money on alcohol.
Tay found out about the transaction when he checked his email and saw Iskandar’s phone number in it, and he then reported the incident to the police after confronting Iskandar on the phone.
Iskandar had offered to compensate Tay, but the latter refused to accept it because he felt Iskandar was not behaving in an acceptable manner.