A woman has been convicted over releasing confidential Service NSW data but will not face prison despite the information being used to seek ransom in an alleged violent kidnapping.
Sira Elkheir handed over the confidential information, which included driver’s licence details, residential addresses and photographs, to her then boyfriend Esau Namoa in February and March 2023.
Mr. Namoa is one of a group of people accused of the attempted kidnapping of Peter Vuong on March 1 from where he lived with his girlfriend Angel Bowyer in Smithfield.
He suffered lacerations and a broken eye socket.
Eight days later, Mr. Vuong was actually kidnapped.
The group of men broke into his home with a sledgehammer and a pistol, detaining Mr. Vuong, transporting him to another property and then making ransom demands to his associate Tran Dinh, according to police facts filed in the case.
Mr. Namoa is yet to make a plea for the kidnapping accusations.
The information Ms. Elkheir supplied included driver’s licence details of Mr. Vuong’s father as well as his date of birth and residential address plus the driver’s licence photographs of Mr. Dinh and his wife Anna.
Police eventually located and freed Mr. Vuong on March 14.
In a conversation recorded by police in a hotel room on April 6, days before her arrest, Mr. Namoa allegedly expressed regret at bringing his girlfriend into the plot.
“As a man, I’ve f***ed up by getting you involved in this,” he allegedly said.
“All I did was search. OK, that’s all I did,” Ms. Elkheir was heard saying.
The 22-year-old appeared in Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday where she was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month good behaviour bond and 30 hours of community service work.
Because she made an early guilty plea to a single charge of making unauthorised access to restricted data on a computer, Magistrate Stephen Barlow gave her a 25 per cent discount to the sentence.
Her barrister Greg Stanton argued Ms. Elkheir should not be sentenced over what later happened with the data but only for the act of unlawfully accessing that information.
Mr. Barlow agreed, saying there was no evidence the Yagoona woman knew those “bad things” would happen.
Mr. Stanton said his client had previously led a “blameless life” with no convictions and came from a difficult background.
The magistrate acknowledged Ms. Elkheir was previously a person of good character while employed in customer service roles at Chemist Warehouse and Service NSW where she now no longer works.
However, he said the community had an expectation that data held by government bodies would only be used for legitimate purposes.
“The integrity of government-held databases is an important part of the general community having confidence in the storage of their personal information,” the magistrate said.
Ms. Elkheir had made multiple intrusions into the databases, meaning this was not just a minor incident, he noted.
Spending five days in custody before being granted bail, she had expressed regret and was sorry for her actions, Mr. Barlow said.
She had also cut off the relationship with Mr. Namoa and had significant insight into her offending.
Ms. Elkheir did not speak to reporters as she left the court surrounded by her legal team and supporters, and was bundled into a waiting car which promptly drove off.
