Aviation security officer Koh Seok Ngoh was supposed to report suspicious unattended bags at Changi Airport as part of her job scope.
But on Dec 27, 2015, when she boarded the airport’s Skytrain around 9:30pm and glimpsed a black document bag with no owner, she took the bag and snuck off to a public toilet at Terminal 3. After rummaging through the bag, which reportedly contained only documents and envelopes, Koh left it in the cubicle, thinking there weren’t any valuables inside.
The 47-year-old — who wasn’t on duty when she committed the offence — was employed by Certis Cisco at the time. She pleaded guilty to one charge of dishonestly misappropriating the bag, and was slapped with a $4,000 fine by District Judge Adam Nakhoda on Wednesday (May 24), reports Yahoo News Singapore.
Apparently, the bag’s rightful owner was Indian national Ajay Bhaskar, a traveller who had arrived at Terminal 3 with his family and accidentally left his bag on the Skytrain around 9.13pm on the way to Terminal 1. According to him, the bag contained four Indian passports, travel insurance documents, four Singapore visas, four boarding passes and US2,800 (SGD3,900).
Eventually, a cleaner discovered the bag and returned it to Bashkar around 5.57am the next day. But when Bashkar checked it, only the documents remained — the money has yet to be recovered, and the court heard that there was no evidence pointing to its whereabouts.
Koh pleaded for the minimum sentence, explaining that this was her first offence, but the judge fined her $4,000 after taking into account the victim’s financial loss, which amounted to almost $4,000.
