The Singapore Chief Justice Yong Pung How announced in a recent judgment in open court that a new sentencing regime must be put in place for the new area of computer crime so as to protect the public interest.
In the first prosecution of credit-card-skimming under the Computer Misuse Act, the Chief Justice doubled the accused’s jail sentence to five years. Such crimes involving computer abuse were previously prosecuted under the Penal Code as cheating cases. If found guilty, an accused would be liable to serve a maximum imprisonment term of 7 years and an unspecified fine. However, under the Computer Misuse Act, similar crimes would now attract a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail and a $50,000.00 fine. Given that such crimes are virtually impossible to detect, the Chief Justice stated that the punishment meted out must accordingly be severe.
The accused had originally been sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment for securing unauthorised access to data stored on the magnetic strips of credit card for the purpose of cheating. He had incited two petrol-kiosk cashiers to swipe customers’ cards through a device that captured the data, which he then forwarded to a counterfeit-credit-card syndicate. The counterfeit credit cards were in turn used to make purchases totalling S$141,525.00 in Japan, Korea and Malaysia. The fraudulent transactions were then traced back to the petrol-kiosk, leading to his arrest. His sentence was doubled upon the prosecution’s appeal against the sentenced meted out by the trial judge.
The petrol-kiosk attendants were also arrested and were sentenced to terms of imprisonment lasting 10 months to a year.
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