He divulged confidential information about an ex-inmate
By
Sujin Thomas
A PRISON officer attached to Queenstown Remand Prison last year failed to keep his distance from inmates and ended behind bars on Tuesday.
Court documents said that Luke Teo Qing Wang had given an ex-inmate personal information of another ex-inmate.
He did this by wrongfully accessing the prison's computer system.
Teo pleaded guilty to the charge under the Computer Misuse Act and was jailed three months in a district court on Tuesday.
Pleading for leniency, the well-spoken 26-year-old read out a letter sent to the District Judge Mr Liew Thiam Leng on Monday.
In it, he said, 'I did not derive any benefit from my moment of folly. This will be my last brush with the law following my harrowing experience.'
But Mr Liew told the court on Tuesday, 'As a prison officer, he should know what his duties are. He has abused his position.'
According to court documents, Teo had befriended two inmates, Tan Jek Sen and Leong Ken Lee during his tenure at the prison. Even after Tan was released last Aug, Teo continued to keep in touch with him.
Later that month, Teo told Tan that Leong would not be eligible for the home detention scheme but would be placed on the work release scheme instead.
When Tan told Leong's father the news, the latter asked Tan to engage a lawyer to fight his son's case.
Tan told Leong's father that the lawyer's fees would amount to $3,000 and that he had engaged lawyer Toh Gim Por.
Leong's father handed over $1,500 in cash to Tan as lawyer's fees as that was all he had. A meeting with the lawyer was arranged for Oct 12.
But when Leong's father called the lawyer with a phone number given by Tan, he spoke to a man named Tommy, who told him that Tan had set him up.
When Leong's father confronted Tan, he claimed that he too had been cheated by the 'lawyer', who then apparently went missing, and that he was going to make a police report.
Tan then told Teo about the incident, who accessed the prison's computer system to get the particulars of Toh Gim Por, also known as Tommy, whom he knew was also an ex-inmate.
Teo wrote Tommy's particulars on a piece of paper and handed it over to Tan.
It was found out that Teo had accessed the computer system without authorisation and the Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau was called in.
Teo was later fired and was working as a business development manager when he was arrested on Oct 31.
