SINGAPORE — After pocketing some S$13,000 from an ez-link cards scam, Mohammed Faizal Zhairudin jumped bail and fled to Malaysia in 2012, only to be nabbed by Malaysian police four years later.

On Thursday (Sept 20), the 42-year-old unemployed man was finally dealt with in court. He was sentenced to five years' corrective training, a harsher form of prison term as the offender is unlikely to be given early release for factors such as good behaviour.

He pleaded guilty to 20 charges under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, two charges of forgery, and one charge of dishonest misappropriation of property. Two hundred and fifty-two other similar offences were taken into consideration for sentencing.

In all, he pocketed S$13,110 from at least 30 victims through his ez-link cards scam, where he topped up the cards online using stolen credit card details, before asking for cash refunds for the cards at the ticket offices at MRT stations.

His scam involved 29 credit cards.

Faizal also forged credit card application forms in two persons' names in order to cheat ANZ Bank Singapore, and stole a wallet at a petrol station.

The total amount he misappropriated came up to S$23,156.46. No restitution has been made.

MODUS OPERANDI

In 2010, Faizal cooked up a plot to top up ez-link cards using stolen credit card details, which he bought from his fellow ex-inmate, Mohamed Sufian Mohamed Sabri.

He got to know Sufian when they were serving time in prison for other offences. After learning that the latter was working as a bartender, Faizal offered him S$30 for each set of credit card details he could pass to him.

So in the course of his work, Sufian would copy down details from customers who paid using their credit cards, and sold them to Faizal.

Faizal then bought 40 ez-link cards, which he topped up online using his laptop and a card reader.

Most of the time, he would max out the top-up limits by topping up each ez-link card with S$50, five times each day. He did this until the credit card was declined.

In order to avoid detection, he topped up the cards online at locations with Internet away from his home, such as McDonald's outlets and cyber cafes.

He then went to MRT stations at Bugis, Somerset and Orchard, where he asked for refunds in cash. He would sometimes also use the ez-link cards to travel.

Faizal committed these offences over about a month.

For his role in the scheme, as well as an unrelated drug offence, Sufian was jailed for seven years and given three strokes of the cane in 2014.

FAIZAL'S OTHER OFFENCES

The police first interviewed Faizal in relation to his ez-link cards scam in March 2010. He was then released on police bail the following month.

In December that year, he spied a wallet that a fellow customer left on the counter at a petrol station in Punggol. He took the wallet, which contained S$250 in cash, one cash card, an ez-link card, as well as ATM, debit and credit cards.

About a week later, he returned the wallet to his victim. However, he had used the cash card to pay for parking, and used the cash and ez-link card for his own purposes.

In 2012, he applied for credit cards twice using the names of two other men.

One of them was Mr Abdul Kahar Mohamad, whom Faizal got to know in prison. Sometime in 2012, he obtained Mr Abdul's NRIC by telling him he wanted to use it to borrow money from a licensed moneylender.

He then filled out an ANZ credit card application form with Mr Abdul's name and NRIC number, but used his own address. He also submitted to the bank a forged image of Mr Abdul's NRIC with the address modified to show his own, as well as a forged Central Provident Fund statement with Mr Abdul's name and a fictitious employer to support the credit card application.

After receiving the card from ANZ, he chalked up S$9,796 between Feb 21 and May 9 that year.

He then forged another credit card application using another man's name, a Muhammad Iskandar Abdullah. It is unclear how Faizal knew him.

This time, he used another address in the form, as he was afraid ANZ would realise that two applications were made by residents of the same address.

He then passed a note to the residents of the second address, saying he had made a mistake in filling out his form. ANZ did not deliver that credit card.

AGGRAVATING FACTORS

Calling for corrective training, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) David Koh said that Faizal was a recalcitrant cheat with a history of property-related offences dating back to 1993.

Most recently, he was jailed 54 months in 2005 for stealing a credit card from a hotel room and using it to buy various items.

"Not only has he been undeterred by significant prison sentences imposed on him in the past, but he has also escalated the seriousness and variety of his offences," DPP Koh added.

The prosecutor noted that Faizal was the mastermind of the ez-link cards scheme. And not contented with stealing credit card information, he went on to forge credit card applications.

After investigations had begun, he absconded and hid on Pulau Ubin while on police bail.

He eventually left Singapore illegally sometime in 2012 for Malaysia.

In 2016, he was arrested in Malaysia by the local police and repatriated back to the Republic on Sept 1 that year.