Victim freed after pedestrian finds ‘help!’ message
Two men were arrested on Monday for loan sharking, fake imprisonment, extortion, causing bodily harm and taking illegal videos and photographs of a person in a flat in Rua de Cinco de Outubro, Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Kam Ka Kit said at a regular press conference on Wednesday.
The two jobless suspects are a 32-year-old local man surnamed Lam and a 37-year-old man from the mainland surnamed Jing who holds an Exit-Entry Permit for Travelling to and from Hong Kong and Macau (colloquially known as a “Two-way Permit”). Both are suspected loansharks. The victim is a 27-year-old man from the mainland.
According to Kam, the Public Security Police (PSP) received a call on Monday afternoon from a resident who found a piece of paper with the word “help!” in Chinese written on both sides in Rua de Cinco de Outubro in the Inner Harbour area.
PSP officers went to the scene to investigate and concluded that the paper might have been thrown from a window of a residential building. The officers put the building under surveillance and discovered that people acting suspiciously entered and exited the building from time to time. The officers entered the building to investigate, rescued the victim, and arrested Lam and Jing. According to a preliminary investigation, the case involved loan sharking and the victim’s illegal imprisonment.
PSP officers transferred the case to the Judiciary Police (PJ) for follow up investigation.
According to PJ spokesman Lou Chan Fai, the victim borrowed HK$300,000 on Saturday from a loan shark to gamble in a casino VIP room in Zape. According to the deal, the victim had to pay 20 percent “interest” on each win; had to hand over the key to his car worth 500,000 yuan as collateral; and sign an IOU. The victim gambled away all the money he had borrowed on the same day, while the loan shark had already deducted HK$60,000 as “interest” from the victim’s winnings but he was unable to repay the debt at once, after which the loan shark took the victim to a flat where he was held against his will.
According to Lou, Lam and Jing went to the flat on Sunday night to take turns to watch the victim. After the loan shark who had lent the money to the victim had left the flat, Jing bound the victim’s wrists with packing tape and stripped the victim to his underpants. He allegedly hit the victim across the back with a metal rod to urge him to get money to repay his debt. Lam used his smartphone to take videos and photos of the victim, and sent them to the victim’s family. On Monday at noon, the victim managed to write “help!” on both sides of a piece of paper and throw it from a window of the flat into the street below. A passer-by, a local resident, chanced on the paper and reported the case to the police.
Under questioning, Lam and Jing admitted to committing the crime. They told the police that they had been promised by the other loan shark – a senior member of the loan-sharking gang – between HK$300 and HK$500 per day for watching and putting pressure on the victim to pay up.
According to Lou, the Judiciary Police discovered a message on their two smartphones from the senior member telling them to go to the flat to force the victim to get money to repay the debt.
Lou said that the senior member of the gang was still on the run at the time of the press conference.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Tuesday, facing charges of usury, illegal imprisonment, causing bodily harm, extortion and illegal recordings of videos and photographs, according to Lou.
