A 28-year-old Indonesian man, Rizaldy Primanta Putra, who works in customer support services for a cryptocurrency company, has been sentenced to three months and four weeks in jail. He was also ordered to pay S$1,667.76 in compensation, which is the total value of the miles he illegally used.
Rizaldy’s crime was buying and using compromised KrisFlyer accounts.
Between May and November of last year, he purchased access to at least eight different KrisFlyer accounts from four sellers he found in a Facebook group. He paid anywhere from S$16 to S$200 for each account.
He knew the accounts were compromised and that the owners hadn’t permitted the accounts to be sold. KrisFlyer is Singapore Airlines’ rewards program, and the miles in these accounts are personal and can’t be given to someone else.
How He Used the Hacked KrisFlyer Miles
Rizaldy came to Singapore twice to spend the miles.
On his first trip in June 2024, he used the miles to buy some pastries and a drink from a place called Paris Baguette. His second trip was later that same month, and that’s when he went for it. He used a massive 245,491 KrisPay miles from another hacked account to buy a Samsung phone and a phone case. The total cost was S$1,636.61, and he bought it from a Sprint Cass Electronics store at Changi Airport.
He also used other hacked accounts to buy other things like cameras, shoes, and clothes.
Singapore Airlines employees eventually caught on to all these fake transactions and filed a police report in October 2024. When Rizaldy came back to Singapore this year, he was caught and detained right at the airport.
He pleaded guilty to two charges under the Computer Misuse Act for changing computer content without permission.
His lawyer said in court that Rizaldy was sorry for what he did and that he had promised to pay back all the money.
The prosecutor had asked for a four-month jail sentence because his crimes kept getting more serious over time, but the judge decided on the three months and four weeks he got.
