SINGAPORE, July 4: A Chinese hacker broke into the Singapore computers of 21 Internet banking customers and fled to Malaysia with their money, a newspaper reported Thursday.

DBS Bank, Singapore’s largest, said the 30-year-old man made off with 62,000 Singapore dollars (37,000 US dollars) June 19 without breaching or triggering the institution’s Internet defences, The Straits Times reported.

Investigations so far showed the bank’s computer security systems were not breached, and the hacking was not carried out by one of the bank’s employees, said Ng Peng Khian, head of corporate security.

Instead, it was likely the culprit hacked into the victims’ computers, obtaining their user-identification codes and passwords to access their online accounts.

“He started at 8:19 a.m. and managed to penetrate the accounts of 21 bank customers,” Ng was quoted as saying. “He stopped at 9:20 a.m.”

From each account, he took 200 Singapore dollars to 4,999 Singapore dollars, the maximum transfer limit allowed.

Within the next hour, he turned up at another branch, withdrew the 62,000 Singapore dollars and then fled to Malaysia, Ng said.

DBS was alerted to the missing funds when the first victim called that afternoon and subsequently traced the movement of the funds.

The bank, which has 370,000 Internet customers, refunded all 21 account-holders.—dpa