Originally posted by Ah Ma:
Spelling mistake helped cop solve case
He gets award for catching teen who posed as minister in e-mail
By Leonard Lim
A SPELLING error gave away the culprit behind a bogus e-mail message sent to a school principal in May last year claiming to be from then Education Minister Teo Chee Hean.
Now head of CID's Intellectual Property Rights Branch, ASP Tan Kah Khin, 31, is among 353 commended. -- LIANHE ZAOBAO
Officers from the Criminal Investigation Department's (CID) Technology Crime Investigation Branch had zoomed in on a 15-year-old student from the school, who stoutly denied having sent it.
So they devised a spelling test for him. When he spelt 'principal' as 'principle' - just as in the e-mail message - they knew they had him.
For his work on this and other tech-related cases, Assistant Superintendent Tan Kah Khin, who headed the investigating team, will receive a Commendation Certificate from Police Commissioner Khoo Boon Hui at the Police Academy today.
The award is being given to 353 officers and members of the public for outstanding work, meritorious service, bravery and leadership.
In a press interview yesterday, ASP Tan, 31, who is married and has a 17-month-old son, said it took about a month to crack the case.
On May 7, the principal of the Pasir Ris school, which cannot be named, received an e-mail message instructing him to expel immediately two 'intolerable students' for 'gangsterism behaviour'.
A copy had also been sent to the Education Minister.
Though it claimed to have come from teo_chee_hean @moe.edu.sg, the principal saw that it had not come through the proper channels and called the police.
'We suspected the culprit was an unhappy student from the school,' said ASP Tan, who is now the head of the Intellectual Property Rights Branch at CID.
The officers interviewed the students named in the e-mail message and went through the ledgers of six cybercafes in Pasir Ris but drew a blank.
Nor could the local Internet Service Providers help.
They then asked the school to draw up a list of IT-savvy students. All 11 claimed ignorance.
But the pieces finally began to fall into place. One of the two students named had been in a fight with someone on the list the day before the e-mail message was sent.
After the suspect 'failed' his spelling test, he admitted that he sent the e-mail message from his home, to spite the boy he had fought with. The other name was a decoy.
Forensic work on his home computer revealed that he had been to the website of a Spanish hacker, where he had sent his e-mail message.
It also came out then that he had mistakenly sent a copy of the e-mail message to the minister, when he filled out a field with the minister's address, not knowing what he was doing.
The boy was convicted in the Juvenile Court in October under the Computer Misuse Act and put on probation for two years. He was also ordered to do 240 hours of community service.
Technology alone didn't solve this crime, said ASP Tan. 'You also need good investigative skills,' he said.
when u becum leporter har?