Exchange student gets jail for stalking ex-friends, accessing their Telegram accounts to find out why they cut him off

Exchange student gets jail for stalking ex-friends, accessing their Telegram accounts to find out why they cut him off He believed he could find out why one of the girls had cut him off by reading her messages with another girl, who was his online friend. 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 messages from a Telegram account named “Security” about three attempts to log in to her account from various IP addresses. In the last message, “Security” sent the girl a link and told her to follow the authentication process in the link to prevent “identity leaks”. She was told that if she did not meet the security requirements, her account would be frozen after 10 minutes, the court heard. Believing that the “Security” account was a real Telegram security feature and that she needed to legitimately verify her account, the girl clicked on the link and was directed to a website that looked like Telegram, where she keyed in an OTP she received. Both the “Security” account and the website were intentionally designed to look like they were owned by Telegram. Through these methods, the hacker or their associates got the second girl’s Telegram credentials, which they used to access her account. The first girl received similar messages and also filled in her Telegram credentials on the website in the link, and the hacker got access to her account. Shortly after, she received a pop-up message from the app informing her that an unknown device had been linked to her account. Finding this suspicious, she used Telegram’s function to log out of her account from all of the devices it was linked to, except for her own mobile phone. After their work was done, Wracker the hacker sent Gao two links providing him live access to his former friends’ Telegram accounts, but the latter soon realised he could only access the second girl’s account. He negotiated with the hacker to instead receive a full archive of the second girl’s chatlogs and media attachments for a discounted price of US$2,500 in Bitcoin, and the hacker agreed. Between Sep 24, 2024 and Sep 26, 2024, Gao accessed the second girl’s Telegram account. On the third day, the first girl told the second girl about discovering the unknown device linked to her Telegram account. The second girl recalled receiving similar messages, and found out the same thing had happened to her account. On the first girl’s advice, she also logged out of her Telegram account on all other devices except her own mobile phone. Gao still had access to the second girl’s chatlogs and media attachments, and saved those files to his personal computer. He read her messages with the first girl, and discovered that she had forwarded their personal messages to the second girl and other mutual friends. Angry, he asked the hacker to create a Telegram channel and upload the messages between the two girls there. On Oct 7, 2024, Wracker, or associates affiliated with the hacker, created a public Telegram channel and uploaded messages between the second girl and her friend. The first girl was then sent a link to the public channel and warned that others would find the channel if they searched the second girl’s Telegram handle. Recognising the username, the first girl told the second girl about the message. While there was no sensitive information about the second girl, she was alarmed and made a police report, the court heard. STALKING While on bail for the above offences, Gao was caught stalking a third victim in July 2025. The third girl, who was also a mutual friend of the first girl, got to know Gao through Roblox in March 2021. They stayed friends and contacted each other online intermittently until August 2024, when Gao came to Singapore for the university exchange programme. According to court documents, they mutually agreed not to share photographs of themselves with each other for privacy reasons and had not met each other in person before. While they were still friends, the third girl had told him which polytechnic she studied at, and he knew her PayPal address and email as she had bought items from him in 2021. He also learnt of her address from an online seller who accidentally revealed it to him after they both bought items from them. Between April 2025 and September 2025, he physically stalked her on at least eight occasions, when she was on the way to school and on the way home. On one occasion in July that year, he followed her from Buona Vista MRT to a classroom in one of the blocks in her school. She already suspected that he had been stalking her and confronted him over text. Gao admitted to stalking her because he wanted to see her. He asked for her forgiveness and sent her money through PayPal. She told him that she was “scared for her life”, returned the money and blocked him on Telegram and Discord. About a week after she blocked him, Gao called her more than 1,000 times in the next two weeks using 23 different phone numbers. As a result of the harassment, the victim felt anxious, scared and distressed. She was reluctant and uncomfortable going to school because she felt unsafe after she found out Gao was physically stalking her and could not pay attention in class, which affected her grades. She suffered a panic attack and had multiple emotional breakdowns, the court heard. She eventually had to move out and register a new phone number and email. [Image text:] STATE COURTS