The Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested a female accounting clerk for embezzling a food product company out of, according to her boss, 550,000 patacas “to save her online lover”, PJ spokesperson Lei Hon Nei said during a regular press conference on Friday.
According to Lei, the 27-year-old suspect surnamed Lai had been an accounting clerk at the food product company in Avenida do Almirante Lacerda since November. Lei said the suspect’s boss discovered that since mid-December the company’s financial records showed that the company had no income. Lei said that the boss questioned her about the lack of income, and she used excuses such as that the customers had not paid the company or that she was too busy to deposit the money. However, according to Lei, the boss then looked through the payment records and discovered that the accounting clerk had been embezzling the company.
Lei said that when questioned by the police the suspect admitted to the crime and said that she had used the money “to save her online lover” whom she had met in August. Lei said that according to the suspect her “lover” was an “American-born-Chinese”, who she had met online and they became “lovers” soon after they met. Lei said that the suspect got a message saying that her “lover” had been kidnapped and she needed to pay the “kidnapper” a ransom to save her “lover”.
According to Lei, the company owner said that the suspect embezzled 550,000 patacas from the company, while the suspect admitted to only embezzling 330,000 patacas and transferred that amount to the “kidnapper”.
Lei said that the suspect was arrested for alleged abuse-of-trust, adding that as the case also involves online fraud the police would continue to investigate the matter.
