Jail for man who paid to get people's addresses from telco employee

A man needed the addresses of various people to recover money purportedly owed by them, so he engaged in a scheme to enlist the help of telco employees.

Philbert Lim Zong Xian, 35, was sentenced to four weeks' jail in court yesterday after he pleaded guilty to two corruption charges.

His accomplice, Lee Cheng Yan, was given the same sentence for the offence on Jan 27. Lee's sentence was part of an overall jail sentence of one year, nine months and 16 weeks for various offences.

Lee, then 38, was sentenced while serving his earlier sentence of four years and seven months' jail for offences including driving a Maserati that had dragged a policeman for more than 100m in 2017.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang said in court yesterday that Lee had told Lim in 2017 he had contacts who could find out the addresses of phone subscribers through their phone numbers.

He added that Lim needed to pay $350 per number to retrieve the addresses. Lim was aware that Lee would need to have contacts from telcos such as Singtel, StarHub or M1 to procure the subscribers' addresses.

"He was also aware that it was wrong for Lee's contacts to procure the subscribers' addresses for him, and for him to pay Lee to get them to do so for him," said DPP Huang.

Some time in January 2017, Lim paid Lee $350 and gave him a phone number to trace the subscriber's address.

Lee then got Kelvin Foo Cheek Ann, a retail consultant at the Singtel shop in Parkway Parade, to retrieve the address from Singtel's system.

Foo had accepted Lee's offer of $20 for each number when Lee approached him for help in 2015.

On or about April 30, 2017, Lim paid Lee another $350 to obtain the address of another person.

Lim could have been jailed for up to five years and fined up to $100,000 for each count of corruption. Foo, then 32, was sentenced to 18 weeks' jail in January last year.