A local schoolboy stole two consumption subsidy smartcards (known in Cantonese as “siu fai kat”) from classmates last month, according to a statement by the Public Security Police (PSP) on Tuesday.
The statement said that the boy is in his teens.
According to the statement, a schoolboy’s parent reported to the Public Security Police on June 9 that his or her son suspected that someone had stolen his “siu fai kat” with a stored value of 4,700 patacas earlier that day.
The parent told the police that his or her son went to a fitness centre in the northern district to work-out in the afternoon that day. Afterwards, he went shopping in a nearby store and discovered that his card which he had kept in his wallet inside his schoolbag didn’t work. He then realised that the card did not belong to him and suspected that someone had stolen his card when he was in the gym and replaced it with an invalid card.
The statement said that PSP officers identified a schoolboy, who is a classmate of the victim, as the suspect. He was accompanied by his family to a police station to assist in the investigation. The suspect told the police that he had discovered a smartcard left there by one of his classmates in his school’s classroom on June 7 and stole it out of greed. He used the card but after two days it had been invalidated, which meant that he couldn’t use it anymore. So he stole another classmate’s card and replaced it with the invalid card as cover-up while he was in the gym in the afternoon that day. The suspect admitted that he had stolen the two cards and used them, but forgot how many times he had used the cards as well as the amounts he had spent. He told the police that he had lost the card.
The Public Security Police contacted the holder of the invalid card who had reported the loss. However, the holder told the police that he or she did not wish to take legal action against the suspect, according to the statement.
The case has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP). The schoolboy faces theft-by-finding and theft charges, according to the statement.
The age of criminal responsibility in Macau is 16.
