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SINGAPORE – For roughly six months in 2019, Ng Wei Chang led a syndicate to cheat EZ-Link out of more than $ 265,800.
On Friday (February 5), the 26-year-old was sentenced to one year and seven months in jail after pleading guilty to unauthorized access to computer material and receiving benefits for criminal conduct.
Police were alerted to the ruse on May 27, 2019, after EZ-Link submitted a report stating that it discovered “a large increase in bad debts” from ez-link cards using the EZ-Reload program.
The program in the EZ-Link mobile app allows users to automatically recharge their cards with up to $ 50 using a user-designated debit or credit card in the event that the remaining value on the ez-link card falls below $ 0.
If there are insufficient funds on the debit or credit card used, the user will be notified through an automatically generated text message to remind them to make the recharge payment.
Up to $ 50 of stored value per ez-link card can also be converted to cash at OCBC ATMs using OCBC ATM cards.
Ng tricked the system by registering at least 125 ez-link accounts and linking at least 1,221 ez-link cards to these accounts in the app between January 1 and June 14, 2019.
He received another 29 ez-link cards from his accomplices.
Ng then applied for many replacement debit cards from DBS, obtaining at least 165 cards in his name. He did this to avoid a restriction on recharges of the same card.
Ng used DBS Video Teller Machines to obtain up to two replacement cards per day for every DBS debit card he had.
He got another 74 DBS debit cards from at least 15 others.
He enlisted his friends to provide him with his DBS debit card information and to request replacement cards, offering them between $ 50 and $ 200 for each debit card.
On 5,323 occasions, Ng got reloads on the 1,250 ez-link cards by bringing the stored value below $ 0 and activating the EZ-Reload program.
The total amount reloaded on the 1,250 ez-link cards was at least $ 265,800.
But he didn’t put enough money into the DBS linked bank accounts or pay for the automatic recharges. He ignored the text message reminders.
Ng then used OCBC’s ATMs to convert the value stored on the ez-link cards into cash after they were reloaded with the program.
After discovering that he could no longer obtain cash this way, he made purchases with ez-link cards and recruited accomplices to buy or resell cigarettes.
Then he kept the proceeds from the sale of the cigarettes and gave a commission to the accomplices. An accomplice gave him no more than $ 1,500 in cash for reselling the cigarettes he had purchased with the ez-link cards.
Ng has not reinstated EZ-Link.
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