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How Dr Pervert got caught

Proactive travel firm co-workers planned sting operation that helped nab the Peeping Tom

By Melissa Sim
April 9, 2006
The Straits Times

WHILE his colleagues were busy shopping for cookies in the supermarket, travel firm employee John Loh noticed something suspicious - a man holding a shopping basket with a canned drink and an upturned cellphone in it, and tailing one of his women colleagues.

The man was standing very close to her, but his focus was not on the cookies on the shelves. Instead, he was looking into his basket and tilting it at an awkward angle.

'When I saw the upturned phone, I knew he was up to no good,' said Mr Loh, 34, referring to the man's use of his mobile phone to film under his colleague's skirt.


He returned to the Cold Storage supermarket in Novena Square later that afternoon with his colleagues with a plan to trap the amateur film-maker.

Their proactiveness led to the arrest of consultant radiologist Wong Siew Kune, 41, who was slapped with a two-month jail term on Tuesday.

It was Ms B.I. Tan, the assistant manager of the travel firm, who insisted that they stand up for their colleague.

She said: 'I told them: 'Let's go back and nab the fellow.' If we let him get away with it, he would just continue doing it to other young women.'

The plan was for Mr Loh to look for the man, while two young female colleagues would play decoys.

He eventually found Wong hovering around the fruit and vegetable section and alerted the women. Ms Tan told her younger colleagues to move into the area, while she went to notify the supermarket staff.

Wong fell for it. He tailed the young women and when approached by a supermarket staff member, dropped his shopping basket and fled. The staff member and Mr Loh chased and caught him.

Mr Loh recounted: 'He kept saying: 'I'm late for work, let me go, let me go!' '

When Wong was detained in the supermarket's back offices, he whipped out his phone and started punching the keys.

Realising he was trying to delete the evidence, Mr Loh snatched the phone from him and saw that Wong had more than one film in the phone.

In fact, Wong had used his mobile phone to film under another woman's skirt earlier that day. He also had footage of his children's 39-year-old tuition teacher in the shower.

Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao said he and the tuition teacher's children were schoolmates and the two families had known each other for five years.

On the day he filmed her in the shower, he had gone to her home to give her a birthday present. When the tuition teacher said she was going out, he offered to wait for her while she got ready and give her a lift to her destination.

It was then that he crept into her room and filmed her in the shower.

In the last four months alone, at least two other men have been caught using their mobile phones to get unauthorised video footage.

One was fined $1,000 and jailed three weeks, the other was jailed four weeks.

Mr Loh said he is really glad that Wong was caught.

'I was really burning inside and just wanted to get my colleagues away from him as soon as possible,' he said.

'I'm glad we went back, because if we didn't stop him, he might still be doing the same thing today.