SINGAPORE — Angered by some clients who failed to turn up for scheduled appointments or cancelled policies, a disgruntled former insurance agent devised a plan to get back at them, with some help from the magical world of Harry Potter.
Posing as “Lord Voldermort” — a misspelling of the villainous character in the Harry Potter movies — and The Incredible Hulk’s Bruce Banner, Ye Lin Myint sent out a series of threatening letters to his former clients and their neighbours. He harassed a total of 33 victims, who cannot be named due to a court order, in 2017.
His ploy involved threatening his former clients to donate Bitcoins to him or face further action.
Yesterday, the 36-year-old Singapore permanent resident was jailed 29 months after he admitted to five counts of aggravated criminal intimidation and another eight counts of harassment offences.
Another 30 counts of similar offences were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Anonymous emails, threats
The court heard that Ye was employed as an insurance agent with Prudential at the time of his offences. He realised that several of his clients were not turning up for scheduled appointments and some began to cancel policies they had bought.
Some potential clients had also backed out from dealings with him.
Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Thiagesh Sukumaran said that the agent was angered by this because he felt that “they were treating him badly and had disrespected him”.
Ye then created two anonymous email accounts using the names “Lord Voldermort” and “Bruce Banner” on a portal called Protonmail, which does not keep any Internet Protocol logs that can be linked to email accounts or retain any personal particulars.
Ye also created a Bitcoin wallet to allow his victims to transfer the cryptocurrency to him easily, DPP Thiagesh said.
On Aug 16 in 2017, he sent one of his victims a typewritten letter and posed as a single parent with a sick child who needed “small financial help”.
Ye added that he had been “watching” the victim for a period of time and knew the victim’s personal details.
He added that this was the first stage and that if his victim did not comply, he would “move onto stage two, three, and so on”.
“The more stages it get, the more miserable your life will become,” Ye wrote.
“I can humiliate your life, I can make you jobless, I can even put you in jail,” he added, asking his victim to buy and send one unit of Bitcoin to his wallet.
Signing off as “Lord Voldermort”, Ye said that he knew the victim was “wealthy enough to buy one Bitcoin”.
He used similar content in email messages to his other victims.
The court was told that Ye obtained the personal information from his dealings with his clients.
Police reports were filed by the victims and no Bitcoins were paid to Ye.
A few days after sending the threatening emails and letters, he came across a news article on how unlicensed moneylenders had harassed their debtors for failing to repay their debts.
He then decided to harass his clients’ neighbours and sent out threatening letters to their addresses. Posing as “Lord Voldermort” and “Bruce Banner”, he threatened to harass their units and their families if they did not persuade his clients to pay him.
He also sent the letters to the workplace of one of his victims, addressing it to her colleagues.
Letters ‘malicious and cruel’
Urging the court to impose a jail sentence of 39 months, DPP Thiagesh said that Ye’s offences were “carefully planned and premeditated”.
“The language of the threatening letters was carefully crafted… to exact maximum shock value,” he said.
Ye had also abused his clients’ trust by making use of their personal details to send the threats.
The prosecutor highlighted the “widespread alarm” his actions caused, leading to police advisories and even an advisory from MP Lee Bee Wah.
It was more aggravating that Ye sought to conceal his identity by using technology and posing as fictitious characters.
He conducted a “persistent, relentless and sustained campaign of harassment” against 33 victims, the DPP said.
In meting out the sentence, District Judge Marvin Bay said that the contents of the letters “can only be described as being malicious and even cruel”.
“(Ye Lin Myint’s) fanciful use of character names such as Harry Potter’s nemesis Lord Voldemort, and Dr Bruce Banner, the genteel alter ego of Marvel character The Incredible Hulk, should not distract from the malign purpose of intimidating messages, which was to maliciously instil fear and extort sums from individuals he knew and against whom he harboured grudges,” the judge said.
Bay said it was likely that schemes such as these used by Ye would only grow in ingenuity in the coming years.
“It is hence essential to pass sentences which will act as an effective deterrent to would-be cyber extortionists from following (his) criminal path,” the judge added.
Bay allowed Ye to start serving his sentence on Feb 15. For aggravated criminal intimidation, he could have been jailed up to four years for each charge. — TODAY
