Chinnavan Tamilarasan, a 32-year-old Indian national working as a technician, was jailed for nine months on June 16 after pleading guilty to theft and housebreaking charges related to stolen equipment from SIA Engineering’s Changi office [1, 2, 3].
Chinnavan was deployed to SIA Engineering to service the air-conditioning system and had access to the server room where he committed the thefts [1, 2, 3]. On January 9, while servicing the system, he stole two new laptops valued at approximately US$2,699.20 (around S$3,474) and hid them in the false ceiling of the server room [1, 2, 3].
The next day, January 10, he tampered with the control box outside the server room using an electrical test pen to unlock the door. He retrieved both laptops, hiding one in his locker and removing the other from the office in a black trash bag [1, 2, 3]. Later that day, he handed one laptop to his uncle for safekeeping at International Business Park in Jurong East; the uncle was unaware that the laptop was stolen [1, 2, 3].
On January 12, a SIA Engineering manager noticed the two laptops missing and questioned Chinnavan, who denied any knowledge of their whereabouts [1, 2, 3]. That same evening, Chinnavan broke into the Changi office again, evading security by jumping a fence. Using the electrical test pen, he opened the server room and stole 16 hard disk drives of unknown value [1, 2, 3].
Security caught Chinnavan exiting the server room and detained him. Police recovered one laptop and all 16 hard drives from him, while the second laptop was later retrieved from his uncle [1, 2, 3].
The court sentenced Chinnavan to nine months’ jail after he pled guilty to one count of theft in a dwelling and one count of housebreaking [1, 2, 3].