A local businessman was arrested on Friday for giving his friend a HK$2 million “rubber cheque” last September, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said at a press conference yesterday.
Chan said that the 59-year-old suspect’s surname was “relatively special” and the police therefore decided not to announce it. The victim is a 63-year-old local businessman who has known the suspect for more than 10 years.
According to Chan, a local man reported to the Judiciary Police on May 18 that he had been cheated out of HK$2 million last September by a man who gave him a cheque that bounced. The victim told the police that the suspect borrowed a HK$2 million interest-free loan on November 12, 2014 from him to open a restaurant in Nape. The suspect promised to pay him back after three months. However, the suspect kept on delaying the repayment. Last September, the victim went to the suspect’s restaurant, who gave him a cheque dated post toDecember 30, 2020.
Chan said that the victim learnt in January that the suspect’s restaurant had closed down. He then went to the bank on January 6 to cash the cheque but it bounced because of insufficient funds in the account. He tried to contact the suspect but to no avail so he reported the case to the police.
According to Chan, the suspect was arrested on Friday when he was about to leave Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint. Under questioning, the suspect admitted that he was unable to repay the debt and knew that the account did not have sufficient funds so he issued the victim a post-dated cheque for HK$ 2 million to delay the payment.
The suspect was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Saturday, facing a fraud charge – issuance of a check without sufficient funds, according to Chan.
