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SCHOLARSHIP holder Zhao Ke from China is finding out the price of curiosity.
For the next 14 months, the 21-year-old undergraduate will have to scrimp and save and give tuition five times a week to pay a $15,000 fine for hacking into Raffles Junior College's (RJC) computer system in March.
In consideration of his age and the fact that he is a student, the judge gave Zhao 15 months to pay.
If he cannot, he will have to go to jail - an option he is already planning to take up.
Zhao intends to go to jail for five weeks during his December holidays to reduce his fine amount by $5,000.
All this trouble because the youth wanted to find out how his classmates fared in the A-level examinations.
Ironically, Zhao never even got to see his friends' grades as he was caught red-handed by a technician.
In March, the China national from Hebei had returned to RJC and hacked into its computer system. He was about to copy a file containing students' grades from a teacher's computer when he was caught.
Zhao did not wiggle out of it, but was left speechless when asked why he did it. 'It was a silly mistake, not worth it at all,' said the first-year National University of Singapore (NUS) student who is doing a double degree in engineering and economics.
'I wanted to see who scored better than me so I could outdo them. I've always been very competitive.'
Zhao has paid the first of 15 $1,000 instalments and also his legal fees of $2,500 using his own savings. With less than $1,000 in his bank account now, he plans to take up at least five tuition assignments.
'With my scholarship allowance of $600 and say $600 from tuition, it'll still be quite hard to survive after paying $1,000 each month,' he said.
So he plans to spend five weeks in prison. 'I have no other choices and prison life isn't really that scary.'
He had spent three days in remand as he could not raise the $8,000 bail.
He came out only after six close friends - China students studying here - pooled their savings and posted bail after reading about him in The Straits Times.
His parents, who are in China, also learnt about it from the news when they saw their only son's face plastered on The Straits Times Interactive website.
Zhao had planned to tell them only after the case was over 'so they won't worry'.
His parents cannot help with his fine as they earn only $400 a month. His father is a retired professor and his mother teaches in a secondary school.
He also stands to lose his scholarship. NUS said it plans to convene a board of discipline to look into the matter. Zhao said the school has asked his lecturers and tutors for reports on his grades and conduct.
'If I cannot continue my studies, I don't know what to do. If only I had thought twice before acting,' he said.
'Curiosity really did kill the cat this time.'
mavistoh@sph.com.sg
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