Man admits taking voyeuristic shots of patients while working as National Dental Centre photographer

SINGAPORE – A photographer at the National Dental Centre of Singapore (NDCS) abused his position as a public healthcare worker by taking voyeuristic pictures of female patients he found attractive.

Elgin Ng, 29, who is no longer working for NDCS, took more than 600 of such photographs of 25 victims and even sent some of them to a friend.

On Nov 18, he pleaded guilty to nine charges, including multiple counts of voyeurism.

Twenty-one other charges will be considered when he is sentenced on Dec 9.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jeremy Bin told the court that as an NDCS photographer, Ng was tasked to take pictures of the teeth and jaws of patients who were scheduled for surgery.

Court documents stated that dentists who wanted such photographs to be taken would first lodge requests on the centre’s Electronic Dental Records (EDR) system.

Ng, who was stationed in a photography room, would ask the patients to come forward after receiving the requests.

He would then take pictures of patients’ faces, primarily of their teeth and jaw.

For added modesty, he had to provide patients with a blue board to cover their chest, regardless of his or her gender.

When dealing with women and girls, Ng, who is a Singaporean, had to either have a female colleague present to assist in the photo-taking process, or keep the curtains in the room open.

After taking the pictures, he would extract the images from the camera’s SD card and transfer them to a secured hard drive owned by NDCS.

Ng would then upload the pictures onto portals, including an NDCS internal system called MiPACS, so that the dentists could view them.

He was authorised to use the centre’s internal systems for work purposes only, and was not permitted to retain any information or photographs for personal use.

Investigations, however, revealed that from June 2021 to May 2024, he took unauthorised voyeuristic pictures of girls and women when his photography colleague was not present in NDCS.

To commit the offences, Ng would note down the names of patients he found attractive and/or those who were wearing tops that revealed their cleavage.

DPP Bin said: “If the patient was scheduled to have photographs taken, the accused would take the requisite photographs, as well as additional voyeuristic photographs of the victim’s cleavage.

“If the patient had not been scheduled for a photography session, the accused would approach them, fraudulently claiming that their dentist had requested for photographs to be taken... to take voyeuristic photographs of them.”

During these sessions, Ng would not give the blue board to the patients and kept the curtains closed, so that he could take such pictures undetected.

To take the pictures, he would arrange the cameras in positions that were prohibited by NDCS – at a top-down angle.

After that, Ng would transfer the pictures to devices including his personal thumb drive.

He would then delete the photographs from the camera’s SD card to avoid getting caught.

Separately, he accessed the MiPACS system unauthorised, to download photographs of the victim’s faces.

Court documents stated that he did this to match their faces to the voyeuristic photographs.

Ng also accessed the EDR system without authorisation to obtain the contact details of some victims.

He then created folders with the victims’ names in his thumb drive, each containing photographs of the victim’s faces as well as voyeuristic pictures of them.

On at least two occasions in 2024, he distributed some of the pictures to a friend via messaging platform Telegram.

Ng’s offences came to light after one of the victims lodged a complaint on April 16 that year, stating that she had been repeatedly called down for photography sessions even though her dentist did not ask for them.

NDCS decided to look into the matter, and asked Ng to provide his version of events.

Upon hearing this, he resigned on May 3, 2024, and failed to attend inquiry sessions in a bid to escape the consequences of his actions.

An NDCS representative lodged a police report the following month, and Ng was charged in 2025.