A former United Overseas Bank (UOB) employee has been found guilty of giving information about over 1,000 customers to a scammer. The employee, Cao Wenqing, is a 30-year-old Singapore Permanent Resident and a Chinese national. She was convicted on 14 charges under the Computer Misuse Act and 13 charges under the Banking Act. Cao had fought the charges, claiming she was tricked by people who said they were from the Shanghai police.
District Judge James Elisha Lee said that Cao was an educated person and had been trained on how sensitive and private customer information is. The judge pointed out that she also knew it was against the bank’s rules to take out any customer information.
The judge found it “unreasonable” that Cao didn’t try to check if the people who contacted her were really police officers. He noted that she could have easily called the Shanghai police herself, which she eventually did after reading about a similar scam in a news article.
How the Scam Worked
Cao was a junior officer in the mortgage department. She was only allowed to access the customer database for her job, which involved selling mortgages and helping existing customers.
In March 2021, a man named “Xiang Ying Dong” and a “Captain Lu” contacted her, claiming to be police officers from China. She agreed to help “Captain Lu” on a voluntary basis. He asked her to search the database for customers who were Chinese nationals and send him their personal details.
Using her work laptop, Cao searched for common Chinese last names. When she found a customer who was a Chinese national, she would copy their name, ID number, bank balance, and phone number into an Excel sheet. After she collected information on about 50 to 100 customers, she would take pictures of the spreadsheet and send them to “Captain Lu” using WhatsApp before deleting the photos.
Cao also searched for specific customers when Lu asked her to and sent him screenshots of their profiles.
Why She Complied
Cao reported the matter to the Singapore police on April 22, 2021, after she realized she was part of a scam. The prosecutor said that Cao went along with Lu’s requests because she was afraid of a fake investigation against her. She felt pressured to cooperate with the Chinese police, who she saw as powerful. She also didn’t want to lose her job or have to go back to China.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Ryan Lim said that “She knew that what she was doing in Singapore was contrary to the bank’s policies and illegal under Singapore law, but went ahead anyway.”
Cao’s lawyer, Mr. Kalidass Murugaiyan, will be back in court in December for her mitigation and sentencing.
