[ad_1]
SINGAPORE: A contestant in Miss Universe Singapore 2017 pleaded guilty on Wednesday (December 23) to using her friends’ debit card details to make unauthorized purchases after memorizing them.
Ashley Rita Wong Kai Lin, 27, admitted four charges under the Cybersecurity and Computer Misuse Act, and another 27 charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The crimes occurred in 2016. The first victim was a 28-year-old man, who befriended her through a mutual friend.
Since Wong was depressed after a breakup with her boyfriend, she dated the first victim socially, the court heard.
During an outing, the victim left her wallet on the table to go to the bathroom. Wong took his debit card out of his wallet, memorized its details, and replaced it.
At the time, the victim did not know what Wong had done, but later realized that there were unauthorized transactions on his card.
He confronted Wong, who admitted to using his card details to make online purchases without his knowledge. He did so more than 20 times between August and September 2016, buying items such as tickets worth more than S $ 300, a purchase of Lazada worth S $ 320 and a purchase of almost S $ 200 in a store. fashion online.
Wong made full restitution for two of the transactions and the victim was able to dispute the third purchase with the bank.
The second victim was a 26-year-old woman who was also friends with Wong. He first realized that there were two charges on his card that he had missed when he tried to make payments online, but failed due to insufficient funds.
He realized that he had been charged around S $ 264 for accommodation at the Clover Hotel. Later, he found out that Wong had used credit or debit card details that belonged to other people, and he confronted Wong about it.
Wong admitted to memorizing his card details when the card was unattended. The victim contested the contested transaction with her bank and was reimbursed, and the bank recovered the hotel’s losses. Since then, Wong has made a refund to the hotel.
The prosecutor requested two months in jail for Wong, who has no prior convictions. He noted that there were three victims on the 31 charges, and more than S $ 2,000 involved in total.
He acknowledged that Wong pleaded guilty and made a restitution. He said there was no undue delay as mentioned by Wong in an earlier hearing, and said the delays were due to the COVID-19 situation and other factors.
Wong, who had to plead guilty in the afternoon after failing to take his mitigation statement in the morning, did not add much verbally to his written statement.
He said a psychiatric report he had filed was “the best possible way to show that back then, in 2016, I was really behaving out of place and it wasn’t something I would normally do.”
He did not mention in public hearing the conditions he had, answering the judge’s questions to say only that he had gone to a psychiatrist to make sure he was “mentally well.”
He said he does not take medication and that he saw the psychiatrist for the last time in November.
Wong participated in Miss Universe Singapore 2017 and later became an arcade commentator.
The judge asked Wong to attend the Institute of Mental Health for a report to assess his suitability for a mandatory treatment order.
He will return to court in February for a further mention of his case.
