Warning: This story contains references to suicide
SINGAPORE: To find out why two girls stopped being friends with him, a 23-year-old man hired a hacker from the dark web to get access to their Telegram accounts and read their conversations.
Kevin Gao, an American exchange student, was sentenced to 20 weeks' jail on Friday (Jun 19) for his actions. He also stalked one of them and another former friend - both girls were 17 at the time.
He had gotten to know all three of his victims online through communication platform Discord and gaming platform Roblox.
Deputy public prosecutor Ashley Chin asked for seven to nine months’ jail for Gao, emphasising his “egregious and escalating” conduct, and noting that all of his victims were under the age of 18 at the time.
Gao’s lawyers, Mr Victor Lau and Ms Ong Hui Wen from Drew and Napier, argued for a two-month jail sentence.
Both the private psychiatrist and the one with the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) agreed that the man suffered from major depressive disorder with anxious distress, his lawyers said in their mitigation plea.
The IMH doctor found that his condition may have contributed to his crimes – his feelings of worthlessness and heightened anxiety significantly compromised his judgment and reasoning capacity, resulting in poor decision-making, Mr Lau noted in court on Friday.
Gao also engaged in self-harm on two occasions, cutting himself with glass in August 2024 and attempting suicide while in remand in January 2025, he added.
The abrupt termination of his friendships with his victims triggered his actions and affected his decision-making, Mr Lau said, adding that Gao’s behaviour was “erratic, subnormal and demonstrates a lack of control”.
He also stressed that Gao was a young university student isolated in a foreign country, and that the age gap between him and his victims was not that significant, calling for the judge to place more importance on rehabilitation than deterrence.
In considering the need to deter him from reoffending, Mr Lau highlighted that Gao will be deported immediately after his sentence concludes.
“Both doctors opined that once Kevin is back in his home country with the requisite familial and social support, his risk of reoffending is low,” he added.
Responding to the defence, Ms Chin disagreed with their characterisation of Gao’s behaviour as “erratic”, given that he hired Russian hackers to hack into Telegram accounts, and tried to call his third victim at least 1,000 times.
The IMH report also notes that Gao was not completely deprived of his ability to control his actions, and he could understand that his actions were wrong, she added.
Noting Gao’s mental condition, District Judge Ong Hian Sun nonetheless agreed with the prosecution that he must still be held responsible for the harm caused to the three young victims and sentenced him to 20 weeks in jail.
TELEGRAM HACKING
Gao got to know his first two victims in 2020 on Discord and they became online friends. In 2022, one of the girls started distancing herself from him because she no longer wanted to be his friend.
He stayed friends with the other girl, the court heard. According to his lawyers, Gao travelled to Singapore twice a year to visit her – they hung out and went sightseeing at tourist attractions, sometimes with her mother present.
Gao came to Singapore in August 2024 for an exchange programme at Nanyang Technological University ending in December 2024. That month, when he was in Singapore, the second girl stopped responding to him because she also no longer wanted to be friends with him.
Desperate for an explanation, he went to her house multiple times between Aug 1 and Aug 12 to confront her about why she had cut off contact. He also sought out her mother, but her mother could not offer him any closure and advised him to see a therapist, his lawyers said.
Her last message to him on Aug 12, 2024 read: “Hello. We cannot be friends anymore. You have caused me a lot of mental distress over the years. Please move on with your life, do stop contacting me or my mom.”
The girl eventually filed a police report against him and Gao received a stern warning for unlawful stalking a month later.
Upset that she had reported him to the police and still curious about why she had cut him off, he decided to search for “hacking services” on Telegram.
He intended to access the Telegram accounts of both girls because he believed that by reading their messages, he could find out why the second girl had cut him off, the court heard.
Gao’s search led him to a Russian hacker forum on the dark web, where he found one named “Wracker” advertising his services for US$1,500 in Bitcoin.
He contacted Wracker on Telegram and asked if they could help him gain live access to the two girls’ Telegram accounts. The hacker said they could make it happen for a total fee of US$3,000, and Gao hired them, providing them with the two girls’ Telegram usernames.
In September 2024, the second girl received three…
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