The Judiciary Police (PJ) busted a gang on Wednesday for selling cheap dried fish maw to parallel traders, in which a local man had been cheated out of 275,000 yuan, PJ spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a special press conference on Friday.
Leng pointed out that following up on the investigation of a phone fraud gang busted on April 24, in which two local men, surnamed Wong and Yu, were nabbed for assisting the gang in setting up internet gateways at a flat in Taipa (as reported by The Macau Post Daily on April 26), the Judiciary Police arrested on Wednesday two more local men, including a kingpin of the gang.
Leng said that the two suspects, aged 38 and 32, are surnamed Wong and Iau respectively.
According to Leng, the follow-up investigation confirmed that in the past three months the four gang members had disguised themselves as food deliverymen and went to the flat in Taipa to maintain the gateways there on several occasions.
During the investigation, Leng said, PJ officers discovered that Wong and Iau were also involved in a dried seafood fraud case, in which the duo together with a 39-year-old local woman surnamed Wong and a 32-year-old mainland woman surnamed Wei “recruited” parallel traders to take packs of fish maw they had bought in the mainland for about 150 yuan a packet to a designated place in the mainland by claiming that “they could make a profit of 300 yuan for taking a packet of fish maw to the mainland, but they needed to pay 2,000 yuan per pack for the fish maw first”.
Leng pointed out that whenever parallel traders bought fish maw from them, the quartet would immediately report the parallel-trading activities to the customs of both the mainland and Macau, “deliberately” causing the goods to be confiscated.
In a separate case involving the quartet, a local man reported a loss of 275,000 yuan to the police saying that he had bought a total of 598 packs of fish maw on two occasions in early April from the four suspects for 1,000 yuan per pack, but the consignee in the mainland refused to pay for 398 of the packs because they were underweight.
Meanwhile, Leng said that the police also found a number of rubbish bins placed in an engineering company run by Yu, adding that in order to steal the goods, the suspects used the rubbish bins to pretend that the fish maw they promised would be taken to the mainland had been confiscated by the mainland customs. A parallel-trading shop reported a loss of a pack of fish maw worth 1,000 yuan at that time.
As a batch of fake bird’s nests and cosmetic boxes were also found at the engineering company during the operation, the Judiciary Police did not rule out the possibility that the five suspects were also involved in other scams, Leng said.
According to Leng, PJ officers arrested Wong and Iau, as well as the female duo separately at their homes in the northern district and Taipa on Wednesday.
The two Wongs, Iau and Wei were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, facing charges of organised crime and fraud involving a considerable amount of money, Leng said.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers display evidence such as packs of fish maw seized from the four fraud suspects during Friday’s special press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Maria Cheang Ut Meng
