SINGAPORE: A former UOB employee who disclosed the information of over 1,000 customers to a scammer was sentenced to a year and 24 weeks’ jail on Tuesday (March 10).
Following a trial, Chinese national Cao Wenqing, 31, was convicted in October 2025 of multiple offences, including 14 counts of misusing a computer system.
Court documents showed that the Singapore permanent resident was a junior officer working in the bank’s mortgage department at the time of the offences.
She had access to the customer database for her work, which involved selling mortgages to new customers and servicing existing customers with mortgages.
The database contained information on customers’ names, nationalities, account numbers, addresses, identification numbers and bank balances.
In March 2021, two unknown individuals known as “Xiang Ying Dong” and “Captain Lu” contacted Cao, claiming to be police officers from China. Court documents did not specify what they told her.
Cao later agreed to act as a person assisting the “Chinese police” on a voluntary basis.
Lu asked Cao to search the bank’s database for Chinese nationals and pass the information to him.
Cao complied, and searched for customers with common Chinese surnames, checking their profiles to identify those who are Chinese nationals.
She then copied their names, identification numbers, bank balances and phone numbers onto a spreadsheet, took photos of it and sent the images to Lu on WhatsApp before deleting them.
She also conducted searches on specific customers at Lu’s request.
Court documents stated that Cao knew she was allowed to use the database only for work, and that she was required to keep customer information confidential.
Cao later realised that she had been deceived and made a police report on April 22, 2021. She was arrested on the same day.
In earlier proceedings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ryan Lim told the court that Cao obeyed Lu’s instructions because she was worried about the “investigations” against her and felt pressured to comply with the “Chinese police”.
However, she knew that her actions were against the bank’s policies and illegal under Singapore’s laws, but “went ahead anyway”, added the prosecutor.
Her bail was set at S$30,000 on March 10, and she is expected to begin serving her sentence on March 16. - The Straits Times/ANN
