Public Prosecutor v Casper Ang (Hong Weiliang)
| Jurisdiction | Singapore |
| Judge | Kamala Ponnampalam |
| Judgment Date | 16 September 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] SGDC 206 |
| Court | District Court (Singapore) |
| Hearing Date | 08 August 2022 |
| Docket Number | District Arrest Case No 902298 of 2020 & ors, Magistrate’s Appeal No 9145-2022-01 |
| Plaintiff Counsel | Ryan Lim (Attorney-General's Chambers) |
| Defendant Counsel | Gill Amarick Singh (Amarick Gill LLC) |
| Subject Matter | Criminal Procedure and Sentencing,Sentencing,Conspiracy to Gain Unauthorised Access to Computer Material under Section 3(1) r/w Section 10(1) Computer Misuse Act,Whether maximum sentence is warranted,Cheating under Section 420 Penal Code,Whether sentence is manifestly excessive,Forgery under Section 468 Penal Code,Transferring Benefits from Criminal Conduct under Section 47(2)(b) and punishable under Section 47(6)(a) Corruption, Drug Trafficking And Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation Of Benefits Act),Managing a Business while being an Undischarged Bankrupt under Section 148(1) Companies Act,Whether custodial threshold is crossed,Attempted Obstruction of Course of Justice under Section 204A r/w Section 511 Penal Code,Furnishing False Information to a Police Officer under Section 182 Penal Code |
| Published date | 24 September 2022 |
This is an appeal against sentence filed by the Accused person Casper Ang (Hong Weiliang) (“the Accused”).
BackgroundThe Accused is a male, Singapore citizen, aged 34 years. At the time of the commission of the offences, the Accused was operating Singapore Funeral Supplies (“SFS”), a funeral services business registered in Singapore and having a company bank account with DBS.
The Accused faced a total of 28 charges for offences committed between November 2015 to February 2021. The charges involved a variety of offences. The Accused pleaded guilty to 11 charges and consented to have the remaining 17 charges taken into consideration for purposes of sentencing. The details of the charges and the sentences imposed are summarised in the table below.
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On 28 August 2018, First Data Merchant Solutions Pte Ltd (“First Data”) issued SFS with a card payment terminal to enable SFS to process card payments. First Data was in the business of providing cashless payment solutions for merchants in Singapore. These solutions included card payment terminals which enabled merchants to process card payments. Merchants could choose to have terminals which require the card to be physically present in order to process a transaction (“card present function”), or terminals which do not require the card to be physically present (“card not present function”). In the latter case, the merchant need only key in the card number and the expiry date to process the transaction. First Data issued SFS with a terminal with the card not present function. The terminal was at all times operated by the Accused.
Charges under Section 3(1) read with Section 10(1) Computer Misuse Act, Cap 50A (“the CMA offences”)Between August 2018 and December 2018, the Accused used the terminal to process fictitious card transactions using card details of credit, debit or charge cards provided to him by his four co-conspirators, Wee Lian Heng Paul (“Paul”), individuals operating under the online personality named “TorCat”, individuals operating under the online personality named “Federation Russia” and “FiRuC”, and individuals operating under the online personality named “Libean”. The Accused processed the fictitious card transactions in an attempt to extract value from the cards provided to him. The Accused knew that his use of the terminal in this manner was not authorised by First Data.
The Accused also knew that that it was likely that the card details provided to him had been illegally obtained and that the charging of the cards was not authorised by the cardholders. He did not try to verify with the cardholders whether they had authorised the transactions. The Accused also did not know the true identities of TorCat, FiRuc or Libean, although he believed them to be Russian.
After a few transactions, the Accused started receiving “pick up card” messages for some unsuccessful transactions, which he knew indicated that the card had been stolen. He also received chargeback requests for some successful transactions, which he knew indicated that the card payments were not authorised by the cardholders. In total the Accused attempted to process 452 transactions. The transactions were either carried out pursuant to his conspiracies with his co-conspirators or on his own accord.
All the affected cardholders are believed to be foreign. 114 transactions with a total value of $356,600.80 were approved. 338 transactions with a total value of $1,403,139 were declined. Of the 114 approved transactions, 97 transactions with a total value of $330,539.80, were subsequently disputed by cardholders and made subject to chargeback. First Data received chargebacks from SFS’s transactions amounting to $335,989.60, which it has since refunded. First Data was unsuccessful in recovering these amounts from SFS directly, but it did set-off $54,635.94 from the funds otherwise payable to SFS. After deducting this amount from the amount in the 97 transactions which were made subject to chargeback i.e. $330,539.80, there was a net loss of $275,903.86 suffered by First Data as a result of the Accused’s scheme. The Accused earned at least $100,000 from his involvement in the scheme. No restitution has been made by the Accused.
Charge under Section 420 Penal Code, Cap 224 (“the cheating offence”)The monies from the unauthorised transactions were credited to SFS’ bank account. The Accused devised a plan to obtain the monies from the account.
In or around 22 October 2018, the Accused’s sister-in-law and his wife had taken away his access to SFS’ finances, as they were concerned about SFS’ debt matters. The Accused’s sister-in-law took over custody of SFS’ chequebook. She insisted on copies of supplier invoices being shown to her before she released the blank cheques to the Accused for payments to the suppliers....
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