Hong Kong student sentenced to 8 weeks in jail for fraudulent activity in organ donation system

Eastern Court Magistrate Stephanie Tsui May-har on Wednesday rejected probation for 20-year-old Wong Tsz-shing, who in mitigation said he was simply “messing around” by inputting personal details of donors without their consent. He was released on bail, pending an appeal against the sentence.

The University of Hong Kong student earlier pleaded guilty to one count of criminal damage and had been remanded for two weeks.

Tsui said his actions had “severely undermined the public interest” even though the Department of Health did not process the invalid applications submitted on May 23 last year.

“The real victim here is the patient in need of [an organ transplant]. The Centralised Organ Donation Register is a vital system and it is unacceptable that [the defendant] wanted to mess with it,” she said.

Wong’s counsel said the defendant had not committed the offence out of hatred towards any particular targets or dissatisfaction with the government, asking the court to take these factors into account in sentencing.

Wong earlier told the court he had formed his opinion on the Hong Kong government proposal for the cross-border donation mechanism with mainland China, put forward in May last year, after reading about it in the news.

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The mechanism is expected to be set up to match patients in need of transplants with potential donors.

But Tsui declined to accept any mitigating factors, saying they did not reduce Wong’s culpability as he attempted to interfere with the system “not once but twice”.

She opted instead for a prison term, with a sentence discount to reflect his timely guilty plea.

Wong appealed against the sentence and immediately applied for bail, which Tsui granted.

Hong Kong organ donor register hits new high; more than 360,000 people signed up

The authorities recorded an unprecedented number of withdrawal requests in the donor register between May 22 and 25 last year, with more than 28,000 applications received via the system or by post.

More than 75 per cent of the applications were found to be invalid, as some applicants had never registered for organ donation.

The design of the online system provides no means for individuals to instantly check their status on the central registry’s website.

Wong put in names including lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu and former chief executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to the system.

Police found Wong’s IP address through firewall records and made the arrest on June 5, 2023.