Engineer faces theft charge

PORT Moresby police have charged a 23-year-old man with the misappropriation of about K400,000 worth of Digicel phone credits on two different occasions.
Robert Koregu from Henganofi, Eastern Highlands was alleged to have fraudulently activated the phone credits to about 700 different Digicel customers between May 3 and 4. Waigani committal court senior magistrate Cosmas Bidar issued a warrant of arrest for Koregu who failed to appear in court last Thursday.
On May 3, Koregu who was a dispatch engineer with Ericsson PNG at Gordon, Port Moresby, allegedly connected his laptop to the Ericsson network, typed his password, went into the Digicel IT system and fraudulently sent Digicel phone credits worth K273,950 to 425 individual Digicel customers.
Again on May 4, using the same method, the defendant, sent Digicel phone credits worth K158,769 to 252 individual Digicel customers.
A total of K432,719 worth of unpaid phone credits were sent. Each customer received between K600 and K700 worth of credits.
The fraud was discovered by Digicel PNG after a search was conducted when they traced the user on their IT system to a computer access point on the network operations centre in Gordon which was normally used by the defendant.
Koregu’s bail of K1000 has been set aside as he did not comply with bail conditions.