Loan sharks in Singapore use leaked phone records to hunt down debtors

SINGAPORE -- Loan sharks have found another way of chasing down bad loans from borrowers who abscond before paying their debts.

On Thursday, a man who worked for a phone company was found guilty of abusing his privileged access to confidential information. As a customer service officer, Tay Kun Hong could retrieve user details such as addresses and national identification numbers, which he handed over to loansharks in exchange for bribes, ChannelNewsAsia reported.

Tay worked for M1 in March 2015, where he accepted S$5 ($3.56) per customer to disclose hundreds of user details. 

The loan shark he was working for got him to rope in a friend who worked for SingTel, who also provided hundreds of entries to the illegal moneylender, who paid Tay a commission for the hookup.

Often, loan sharks make copies of debtors' state-issued identity cards when they lend money, which states the latter's residential address. When people flee their debts, they might move and change their phone numbers to evade debt collectors, but a phone company would have updated records of phone numbers and billing addresses connected to the identity card number.

In addition to the privacy breaches that Tay committed, charges against him included helping loan sharks with other tasks, such as accepting S$200 ($142) to harass a debtor by splashing black paint and writing on their walls.

Loans harks in Singapore have also adopted other methods of harassment, such as notifying a borrower's neighbour of bad debt, in order to embarrass them.

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Tay's actions violated the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, as well as the Moneylenders Act, for assisting the loan sharks, and the Prevention of Corruption Act for accepting bribes.

He was sentenced to a S$90,000 ($64,125) fine and 17 months in jail, where he will be receiving three whips of the cane.

Caning punishments in prisons in Singapore employ a rattan cane, and are carried out by a trained prison officer.

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