Mercury's Cybercrimes and her Views on Security – Part 1

Jia Min's Phone Bugging Incident on 25 July 2022

On 25 July 2022, Mercury, impersonating someone named 'Nic', messaged Tobias with a copy of Jia Min's sex tape. (Please refer to the Glossary and 'Our First Statement' for a refresher on who's who.)

Mercury then alluded to having an "inside woman". Mercury claimed to have knowledge that "Jia Min loves talking to Cari over the phone".

As Mercury was texting Tobias, Jia Min was at home, on a Zoom call with some friends. At 7:14pm, Mercury texted: "I just just heard Harv's voice on [Jia Min's] PC!" At 7:15pm, Mercury continued: "Cari, Joyce, Harv, [Jia Min], who's the 5th voice?" This revealed that Mercury was somehow listening in on Jia Min's Zoom call.

Note that Mercury's message in Screenshot #2 – "How the hell is Harv alive!?" – contains surprise because Mercury was, at this point, convinced that she had successfully killed Harvey. We believe that this was one of the eight murders that Merucry has claimed, and that Mercury had attacked someone who resembled Harvey and was thus under the impression that Harvey was dead, as of 25 July 2022. We believe that the Harvey look-alike who Mercury has claimed to have murdered (under the belief that it was Harvey) is another Indian woman by the name of Hisham. We will elaborate on this in a separate post.

It was apparent that Mercury was somehow listening in on Jia Min. As such, a sweep was carried out in Jia Min's room. Jia Min noticed a suspicious string of lights in the corner of her room, which she had no recollection of ever owning. The police were called down to Jia Min's house. While the police were taking Jia Min's statement, Mercury sent Tobias several further messages (Screenshot #4), bragging about how she had bugged Jia Min's phone. Note that the first message at 9:28pm indicates that Mercury could hear Jia Min and the people doing the sweep "breaking [their] noggins over [Jia Min's] blinking lights". Mercury's description was accurate to what was literally happening in Jia Min's room at the time, as Jia Min and the others were verbally discussing whether the lights were bugged. This means that Mercury was genuinely listening in.

Mercury also sent Joyce similar messages. At the time of these messages, Joyce was at Jia Min's house, helping with the sweep, and the police were also present. The police officers issued a case card:

Jia Min's iPhone X was wrapped in foil and sent for further analysis.

New Impersonation Attempts and Discovery of Further Bugging in March 2023

On 5 March 2023, Mercury messaged Carissa with a Telegram account impersonating Sanjith, who is one of Tobias' friends. (Mercury had spelt Sanjith as 'Sanjiv', which is incorrect.) The account threatened Carissa to drop her PHC claim against Mercury, stating that if Carissa failed to do so, Carissa would "have to endure the same beating coming to Harvey".

The profile picture used in this account appears to have been taken from an image of Sanjith playfully pretending to beat Joyce up. It had been photographed as a joke.

According to Joyce's recent post on Twitter, this image had been taken by Jia Min in early November using a DSLR camera. This image was only sent to Sanjith, Tobias and Joyce. No one had posted the image on social media at the time.

This begs the question: How did Mercury obtain the image?

After Jia Min's iPhone X was found to have been bugged, Jia Min bought a brand new iPhone. However, Jia Min did not change her passwords, and Mercury had continued access to Jia Min's files. It is suspected that Mercury had obtained the image via Jia Min's laptop, which has since been sent for forensic analysis.

Mercury's Hacking into AWARE and Mensa Singapore in 2022

On 21 June 2022, Mercury messaged Anon Victim #3 and another person with a Telegram account bearing the name 'Salvatore'. Note that the account's bio states that it is the "Backup Account of Ms Mercury Jamie Alice".

In these chats, Mercury admitted to having gained unauthorized access into the computer systems for both AWARE and Mensa Singapore. Mercury also stated that "the police has threatened to produce additional charges against me for Computer Misuse".

Mercury's Views on Security

As mentioned in an earlier post, Mercury utilises technology in harmful ways, such as to impersonate and mislead, and believes that she is technologically untraceable.

On 4/5 July 2022, Mercury gloated that the "Tele account" that she was using to impersonate Carissa was "running off the Nokia 7 Plus that [Harvey] personally set up for with orbital protection":

For context, Harvey had previously provided Mercury with a Nokia 7 Plus phone back in 2021. This was when Harvey was still under the impression that Mercury was trustworthy, and was supporting Mercury out of good will. Please see this for more background.

In relation to Screenshot #10, "orbital protection" refers to the Orbot Proxy application, which routes connections from different applications through the Tor Network. To quote Harvey:

In May 2021, I had assisted Mercury in setting up an Android device, a Nokia 7 Plus TA-1062, with always-on Orbot protection – which I had named "Messiah".

In the same conversation on 4/5 July 2022, Mercury also texted:

From this, it is clear that Mercury apparently perceives the level of security provided by tools in absolute terms, and appears to think that any single security measure or tool is enough to ensure that she is fully "untraceable". This is not the reality of tech and/or cybersecurity.

Mercury in the Cybersecurity Industry

Mercury's LinkedIn profile shows that she is currently working as a "marketing executive" and "currently helm the Marketing department" at a Singaporean cybersecurity firm, BitCyber.

It appears that Mercury had started working at BitCyber in January 2023.

Being at the helm of the marketing department at any company is a heavy responsibility. In most companies, an "executive" position is considered an entry-level position. Thus, it can be deduced that Mercury being at the helm of the marketing department means that the department has only one person in it.

As is easily searchable by Google, Mercury has criminal charges against her, namely for the anthrax hoax that she had committed in August 2021, as well as for the possession of "an iPhone containing 72 obscene videos and 60 obscene images between April 2020 and August 2021". Given this information, alongside Mercury's cybercrimes and her warped, misguided and inaccurate views on security, it is odd that Mercury was selected and hired by BitCyber. We wonder if BitCyber have done background checks on Mercury as part of their hiring process.

After all, BitCyber is in the cybersecurity industry: It appears to be the exclusive partner for BitDefender products in Singapore, as well as the regional distributor for Invisiron and other brands offering security solutions.