Man jailed for using stolen credit card details to take S$560 worth of taxi rides, order food

SINGAPORE — After coming across stolen credit card details that were circulating in a Telegram chat group, Muhammad Syawal Kamis used the information to take multiple taxi rides without paying for them out of his own pocket.

The 32-year-old also used more stolen card details to place several orders from fast-food chain Burger King and buy empty cartons from a retailer.

For his crimes, the Singaporean was jailed for six months and one week on Monday (Feb 7).

He pleaded guilty to three cheating charges, with two others — including refusing to sign a police statement — taken into consideration for sentencing.

This was far from Syawal’s first brush with the law, the court heard. His criminal history dated back to 2003 when he was given probation for criminal breach of trust, before he was sentenced to reformative training for robbery.

He was previously jailed six times for cheating or property-related offences as well.

Most recently, he had come across details from a stolen credit card issued by the Bank of Oklahoma in the United States around November 2020. He added the details to his ComfortDelGro taxi booking account.

He charged 34 rides worth S$562.91 to the credit card between Nov 21 and Dec 23 in 2020, doing this until an error message popped up in his account.

He has since made restitution of S$1,072, inclusive of administrative fees, to the taxi company.

Separately, he used stolen details from several foreign credit cards to make food orders. He did this by similarly linking the cards to his Burger King account and delivering some of the orders to his residential address.

Burger King delivered food to him worth S$225 as a result. He has since made restitution to the chain.

Then, in March last year, Syawal linked more stolen credit cards from the same Telegram chat group to his Shopify account. He proceeded to make payment of S$28 to Jaguar 3R Ventures for two empty cartons.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Joseph Gwee, who sought the sentence imposed, noted Syawal’s string of previous crimes. He was jailed twice in 2018 for cheating offences involving S$220 and S$110 respectively.

Syawal, who teared up a few times in court, said through an interpreter that he married a woman in Indonesia and has a two-year-old daughter. He also promised not to re-offend in Singapore again.

District Judge Shawn Ho expressed his worry for Syawal, saying that he could be sentenced to corrective training in the future if he broke the law once more.

Corrective training is a harsher form of imprisonment with a minimum length of five years, with offenders unlikely to be given early release for factors such as good behaviour.

Those convicted of cheating can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.