SINGAPORE — The sole proprietor of a mobile phone shop has been given a record S$48,000 fine for using his customers’ personal data to illicitly register prepaid SIM cards without their knowledge or consent.

Koh Wei Ming — who is also named Muhammad Amin Koh and ran the shop Mobile Chat — then sold the SIM cards to anonymous buyers.

In a statement on Wednesday (Jan 17), the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) said investigations found that Koh’s errant practices took place over a period of four years with more than 1,000 illicit SIM cards sold.

The S$48,000 fine is "the highest penalty meted out for this offence to date", the commission added.

Koh was previously sentenced to 16 months’ jail last September for unauthorised modification of the contents of telecommunications company M1 Limited’s computer system for the registration of prepaid SIM cards.

Mobile Chat has been operating since 2015 in Geylang and Koh used two methods to illegally register prepaid SIM cards.

In some cases, after scanning a customer's identity documents to register a SIM card they wished to purchase, he would scan the documents a second time to register a second SIM card to the same customer without their knowledge.

On some occasions, some customers would not want to continue with their purchase after the registration process but instead of cancelling it, Koh would keep the SIM card and activate it without the customer's knowledge before selling it to unauthorised buyers. 

Koh made about S$35,000 selling such cards to anonymous buyers.

PDPC did not state which four years these offences took place, but it commenced investigations against him after receiving almost 1,400 complaints from members of the public between February 2020 and September 2021 about receiving marketing messages despite their numbers being registered with the Do Not Call Register.

The messages were traced to 95 SIM cards bought from Koh. 

The PDPC said that this was the second case involving the serious misuse of individuals’ personal data for illegal activities.

The first involved mobile retailer Yoshi Mobile, that sold illicit SIM cards that were then used to send unsolicited messages.

Yoshi Mobile was handed a fine of S$21,000.

The commission said that takes a serious view on the misuse of data and will take firm enforcement action against such errant retailers.