SINGAPORE – A former UOB employee was convicted on Oct 14 of multiple charges following the disclosure of information on more than 1,000 customers to a scammer.
Cao Wenqing, 30, was convicted of 14 charges under the Computer Misuse Act and 13 charges under the Banking Act.
The Chinese national had contested the charges and was represented in court by lawyer Kalidass Murugaiyan from Kalidass Law Corp.
Court documents showed Cao was a junior officer working in the bank’s mortgage department at the time of the offences. She had access to the customer database for her work, which involved selling mortgages to new customers and servicing existing customers with mortgages.
The database contained information on customers’ names, nationalities, account numbers, addresses, identification numbers and bank balances.
In March 2021, two unknown individuals known as “Xiang Ying Dong” and “Captain Lu” contacted Cao, claiming to be police officers from China. Court documents did not specify what they told her.
Cao later agreed to act as a person assisting the “Chinese police” on a voluntary basis.
Lu asked Cao to search the bank’s database for Chinese nationals and pass the information to him.
Cao searched for customers with common Chinese surnames and checked their profiles to identify those who were Chinese nationals.
She then copied their names, identification numbers, bank balances and phone numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, took photos of it and sent the images to Lu on WhatsApp before deleting them.
She also conducted searches on specific customers at Lu’s request.
Court documents stated that Cao knew she was allowed to use the database only for work, and that she was required to keep customer information confidential.
Cao later realised that she had been deceived and made a police report on April 22, 2021. She was arrested on the same day.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Ryan Lim told the court that Cao obeyed Lu’s instructions because she was worried about the “investigations” against her and felt pressured to comply with the “Chinese police”.
However, she knew that her actions were against the bank’s policies and illegal under Singapore’s laws, but “went ahead anyway”, said the prosecutor.
Cao will be sentenced in December.
