A local man was arrested on Monday at the Barrier Gate checkpoint for cheating 38 mainlanders last year out of 190,000 yuan (239,000 patacas) by claiming that he could arrange construction jobs for them, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The 66-year-old jobless local man is surnamed Leong.
According to Lei, a mainland woman came to Macau in January 20 to report to the Judiciary Police that 38 mainlanders had been cheated out of 5,000 yuan each totalling 190,000 yuan by a local man surnamed Leong who claimed that he could assist them in finding a job in Macau as construction workers.
Lei said the woman told the police that she met Leong last February in the mainland. Leong told her that he could help mainlanders interested in working on construction sites in Macau. Leong told the woman that the applicants needed to pay 5,000 yuan each and submit copies of their mainland ID cards and other personal documents and information so that he could arrange the jobs for them.
Lei said that the woman introduced her mainland friends to Leong without benefitting financially from her intermediary role. She helped 38 of her friends remit a total of 190,000 yuan between February and July last year to Leong’s bank account. To win her trust, Leong had shown her several “construction company documents”.
She lost contact with Leong after she had remitted the money to him.
According to Lei, the Judiciary Police identified Leong as the suspect and confirmed that he had gone to the mainland on January 19. PJ officers arrested him on Monday when he returned to Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint. Under questioning, Leong admitted to cheating the mainlanders. He told the police that he had downloaded an app from the Internet to produce forged documents, complete with a fake construction company stamp. He also claimed that he had gambled away all the filthy lucre.
Leong has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a fraud charge, according to Lei.
