Unable to pay back a loanshark, Tay Kun Hong turned to identity theft to settle his troubles. And as a customer service officer with telco M1, he was more than capable of mining all the personal information he needed.
The 33-year-old started mining the database of M1 in March last year and sold them for $5 per subscriber to the ah long, Channel NewsAsiareports. He asked a friend at Singtel to do the same, and got paid $10 for each name, which he split evenly with his friend. Since Tay was unable to pay his debts, he offered his services in being a personal information provider for a licensed moneylender — and the moneylender agreed.