Man jailed for $265k ez-link top-up scam

For about six months in 2019, Ng Wei Chang, 26, spearheaded a syndicate to cheat EZ-Link of more than $265,800.

Yesterday, he was sentenced to one year and seven months' jail after he pleaded guilty to securing unauthorised access to computer material and receiving benefits from criminal conduct.

The police were alerted to the ruse on May 27, 2019, after EZ-Link lodged a report stating that it had discovered "a large spike in bad debts" from the EZ-Reload programme.

It allows users to have their cards automatically topped up with up to $50 using a debit or credit card, should the value left in the ez-link card drop below $0. If there are insufficient funds in the debit or credit card used, the user will be notified through an automatic text message reminding him to make payment for the top-up.

Up to $50 of stored value per ez-link card can also be converted to cash at OCBC ATMs using OCBC ATM cards.

Ng cheated the system by registering at least 125 EZ-Link accounts and linking at least 1,221 ez-link cards to these accounts on the app between Jan 1 and June 14 in 2019.

He got another 29 ez-link cards from his accomplices.

Ng applied for many replacement debit cards from DBS Bank, getting at least 165. He did this to get around a restriction on top-ups from the same card.

Ng used DBS' video teller machines to obtain up to two replacement cards per day for each DBS debit card he had.

He got another 74 DBS debit cards from at least 15 others.

He recruited his friends to apply for replacement cards, offering them between $50 and $200 for each debit card.

On 5,323 occasions, Ng got top-ups on the 1,250 ez-link cards by bringing the stored value below $0, triggering the EZ-Reload programme.

But he did not deposit enough money in the linked DBS bank accounts or make payment for the automatic top-ups. And he ignored the text message reminders.

Ng then used OCBC ATMs to convert the stored value in the ez-link cards into cash.

After he found he could no longer get cash this way, he made purchases with the ez-link cards and recruited accomplices to buy or resell cigarettes.

He kept the proceeds from the sale of the cigarettes and gave accomplices a commission. One accomplice gave him not more than $1,500 in cash from the resale of the cigarettes, which had been purchased using the ez-link cards.

Ng has not made restitution to EZ-Link.