Former Citibank employee fined S$130,000

QX179R SG

SINGAPORE: A former Citibank employee who stole confidential client information before joining a rival bank was fined S$130,000 on Tuesday.

Three days after she took up UBS’ job offer in June last year, relationship manager Lydia Koh Meng Yang, 29, accessed the bank’s database and sent customer information to her personal email account, the court heard.

District Judge Jasvendar Kaur imposed a fine of S$130,000 — S$6,500 for each of the 20 charges under the Computer Misuse Act she had pleaded guilty to — and took 168 other similar charges into consideration.

Koh is the fourth of seven ex—Citibank employee charged with similar offences to be dealt with. In mitigation, defence lawyer Christine Sekhon said the offences were not committed "surreptitiously".

Her client was a rookie in the banking industry then and did not know copying clients’ details was against the law, she said. Among the ex—Citibank officers who ran afoul of the law, Koh is the youngest and most junior.

It led Koh to assume her Citi clients would follow her to UBS since they were dealing with her personally all along, the lawyer added.

"She wanted to avoid a situation where the clients who called her were left in the lurch, since these were the clients whom she had faithfully serviced during her tenure at Citibank, many of whom would have invested because of her relationship with them and their trust in her," said Ms Sekhon.

Koh was allowed to use the S$50,000 bail to pay off part of the fine.

The judge acceded to an application by Koh — who has been unemployed since, and has two retired and unwell parents — to pay the remaining S$80,000 over 12 monthly instalments. She had earlier also paid Citibank’s legal costs of S$15,000 in a civil suit.

She could be jailed six weeks for each charge if she defaults on her fine payments.

Koh’s former colleagues who have been dealt with: Esther Lim Siew May, 32, was fined S$160,000 on 20 charges; Carel Low Siok Liang, 34, was fined S$173,000 on 22 charges; and Valarie Lim Ming Huey, 31, was fined S$40,000 on six charges.

— TODAY/ yt

Bangulzai SG

she do but get caught

dalim1966sg SG

It is very oblivious our legal system is flawed.

A lady driver(a chinese newspaper's editor) could only be jailed for 1 day and fined $2000 for beating traffic lights and caused 1 seriously injured and another dead.

And here this poor lady was fined such hige amount. Puke.

The law seems only to protect and safeguard the interests of the rich, elites and big business entities.

QX179R SG

Jelene Lee Kit Peng, 35, currently unemployed, was fined a total of $70,000 yesterday by District Judge Jasvender Kaur.

The court heard that Lee had compiled information pertaining to 239 Citibank customers while working at the bank's Orchard Road branch.

Yesterday, the mother of three pleaded guilty to 10 counts of accessing the bank's computer database and gleaning information belonging to the bank between July 1 and July 5, 2006.

She then e-mailed the customer information from her Citigroup account to her husband's personal e-mail account, despite knowing she was not supposed to do so.

This occurred soon after she had accepted a job offer from rival bank UBS to join her former boss, Jonathan Seah Thiam Heng, as a corporate adviser on his team there.

Seah's case is pending.

Lee's services were terminated by Citibank on July 11 that year, days before she was due to leave, after the bank discovered what she had done.

A further 229 charges were taken into consideration.

Lee could have been fined up to $100,000 and/or jailed for up to 20 years on each charge.

--ST