hawkplay Two men linked to Singapore-based Chinese cybercrime ring first to plead guilty

SINGAPORE: Two Malaysian businessmen admitted on Tuesday (Oct 15) to a conspiracy to buy the personal data of more than 9,000 people from a Chinese national, who claimed he had the personal information of over a million Thai nationals.

These are the first guilty pleas linked to an alleged global cybercrime syndicate based in Singapore, run by Chinese criminals who operated out of a rented bungalow in Mount Sinai, with alleged victims from countries like India and Korea.

Penang resident Seow Gim Shen, 42, and Selangor resident Kong Chien Hoi, 39, pleaded guilty to one charge each of conspiring with Chinese national Sun Jiao to have the personal information of 9,369 unknown individuals supplied to them for gambling operations.

The court heard that Seow got to know a Chinese national named "Andy" sometime in 2019 while visiting a casino in Cambodia. Andy introduced him to a man named Joe, who was in fact Sun, 42.

Andy told Seow that Sun dealt in databases of personal information and could sell them to people involved in online gambling operations.

As Seow knew that his friend Kong had a client dealing in online gambling operations, he introduced Kong and Sun to each other.

The two Malaysian men did not know that Sun was staying in Singapore, or what businesses he ran.

They also did not know how Sun obtained his databases but believed they could have been stolen. Sun later allegedly told investigators that he had obtained the data through hacking other gambling websites.

Sometime around Aug 24 last year, Seow added Kong to a chat group titled “Malaysian Data” for Sun and Kong to negotiate the sale of the illegally obtained personal information.

On Jul 24 this year, while in Malaysia, Kong asked to buy personal information belonging to Thai nationals.

Sun said he had such information for over 1 million Thais. Kong asked for a sample, intending to use the data for an online gambling operation he was assisting in.

The website was accessible from various countries including Singapore.

Later that same day, Sun sent a file to Kong and Seow over WhatsApp, containing the personal information of more than 9,000 people including their names and phone numbers.

The file was a sample extracted from a larger database and was part of negotiations for the sale of the full database.

TESTING THE DATA

After receiving the file, Kong sent it to an associate known as "Nida" and instructed her to cold-call the numbers inside. 

On Aug 17, Nida sent Kong a detailed report stating that her team had made call tests for 2,000 numbers and sent out an SMS blast to all 9,369 numbers.

She provided the resultshawkplay, which showed that 34 per cent of the 2,000 numbers could be contacted. An SMS blast sent out to the 9,369 numbers showed that 32 per cent of the SMSes were successfully delivered.

A detailed report from the data test. (Photo: Court documents)

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