26 months’ jail for man who stalked SMU peer, hacked email accounts, leaked others' sex videos

SINGAPORE — A 30-year-old man who committed a string of offences such as stalking a fellow Singapore Management University (SMU) student and hacking into her boyfriend’s email account in a bid to “protect” her, was jailed for two years and two months on Wednesday (March 16).

Shaun Sinclair Lau Wei Kit’s actions led to the couple falling out after Lau sent some of the victim’s boyfriend’s personal documents to her.

Apart from that, he used a now-defunct website to obtain leaked passwords, which he used to access other people’s accounts before selling their sex videos for S$3,500. This included a 25-year-old man whose Instagram profile he happened to see.

Lau pleaded guilty in October last year to six counts of unauthorised access to computer material, one count of distributing obscene videos under the Films Act and one count of unlawful stalking.

District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt took into consideration 11 other similar charges for sentencing.

On Wednesday, the judge told the court that he generally agreed with the prosecution’s submissions that Lau’s offences constitute a “gross intrusion and violation of privacy of the victims”.

“I agree that a sufficiently deterrent sentence is justified to reflect the gravity of his offences and the trauma suffered by the victims,” he added.

Lau’s sentence was backdated to Oct 25 last year. All of his victims cannot be named due to court orders to protect their identities.

FOUND VICTIM'S NEGATIVE PEER APPRAISAL

The court earlier heard that Lau stalked his SMU classmate in the second half of 2016 when he was still studying there.

In an SMU commencement announcement, it was stated that he graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in business management.

In September 2016, he found the email address of the classmate's boyfriend through a Google search.

Lau then guessed his password, which was a combination of his name and birth date. Lau had figured out the man's birthday by putting together the year from his SMU alumni email address with the day and month from his Facebook account.

After logging into the boyfriend’s email at least 12 times in the span of a week, Lau found a photo of him with a woman, documents from his divorce, and a video of him and a woman lying on a bed, prosecutors told the court.

Lau downloaded the files and sent them to the man’s girlfriend. That same day, the couple broke up. 

Lau then asked the woman out but she rejected “at least some of his requests”, the court heard.

He also approached her at the SMU library and asked her to forget her boyfriend. By then, she had intended to make a police report against Lau.

He stalked her until Nov 18, 2016 and also hacked her email account. He found her negative peer appraisal of a former project-group mate, whom she had also previously dated, and sent a screenshot of this to the group mate.

Lau then found her grades for that academic year and sent this to the group mate.

EARNED S$3,500 FROM SELLING SEX VIDEOS

Separately, Lau targeted a 25-year-old man in 2017 after coming across his Instagram profile.

Lau found the victim’s email address and password on a website that hosted leaked account passwords, which has since been taken down by the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He logged into the email account several times and saw emails from an application called Keepsafe. He then gained access to the victim’s Keepsafe account and found several sex photos and videos there.

Among this material were 109 sex videos the victim had taken with four others, including a 22-year-old woman.

Lau proceeded to download the videos. In August 2017, he transferred the videos to an individual and received S$3,500 for them.

He also sent the videos to other users. The clips were eventually uploaded on various pornographic sites, which caused the five victims “significant suffering”, the DPPs told the court.

After watching the videos, Lau decided to look through the accounts of the 22-year-old woman to look for more material.

He used the website again to find her leaked password and managed to log into her email and Snapchat accounts, but did not find anything of interest.

Lau also came across a 20-year-old student’s Instagram profile, despite not knowing her personally. He got hold of her email address and password, then logged into her Dropbox account in March 2018.

He found at least four sex videos of her with her ex-boyfriend, downloading them for his personal consumption.

Court documents did not state how all of his offences came to light or when he was arrested.

Those convicted of stalking can be jailed up to a year or fined up to S$5,000, or punished with both.

For distributing obscene videos, Lau could be jailed up to two years or fined up to S$80,000, or both. And for illegally accessing computer material, he could be jailed up to two years or fined up to S$5,000, or both.