A man from the mainland was arrested on Thursday for his alleged involvement in a counterfeit credit cards deception case, defrauding 11 local shops out of a total of 169,518 patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou said during a regular conference yesterday.
Lei identified the suspect as a 29-year-old male surnamed Xie who claimed to be jobless.
According to Lei, the Judiciary Police (PJ) received a referral on Thursday from the Public Security Police (PSP) about a suspicious credit card transaction at a hotel shopping centre. At 2 p.m. that day, Xie had selected a handbag valued at 49,000 patacas and paid for it with a credit card. Due to a discrepancy between the issuing bank on the transaction receipt and the card details, the staff suspected it was a fraudulent transaction, cancelled it, and alerted security. The shop incurred no actual loss.
The police later apprehended Xie at the scene and seized 16 items from him at his hotel guestroom, including handbags, sneakers, fine wines, drugs, a suitcase, along with 11 credit card receipts, a laptop, a mobile phone, eight credit cards, as well as three welding guns and two knives used for counterfeiting.
The police also discovered that between last Tuesday and Thursday, Xie had used at least five counterfeit credit cards to make at least eight purchases at various shops in Macau, amounting to a total of 149,258 patacas. Xie had also been involved with using at least five counterfeit cards on June 27, 2025, making five credit card purchases in Macau, with the initial amount involved being 20,260 patacas. In total, 11 shops incurred losses due to Xie’s use of the bogus credit cards, ranging from 1,470 to 85,200 patacas, with the total loss amounting to 169,518 patacas.
Lei noted that the chip data on four of the credit cards did not match the card details and showed clear signs of forgery, while the other four cards matched in data, but two of them showed signs the chips had been tampered with, raising suspicions of alteration. The police also discovered a significant amount of credit card information, photos of forged documents, and instructional videos on creating counterfeit cards on Xie’s mobile phone and computer. The videos demonstrated the suspect using a welding gun to heat up credit card chips, extracting them with a knife, and ultimately affixing the illegally obtained chips to credit cards to create counterfeit ones.
Under questioning, Xie claimed that he had been promised by someone he would receive 10 percent of the total value of the goods as “remuneration”, but claimed that he had not yet received any payment.
Xie has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing charges for counterfeiting currency, trafficking in counterfeit currency, and computer forgery.
This undated handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) yesterday shows PJ officers seizing illegal items while searching the fraud suspect’s hotel guestroom.
