A local man was arrested on Thursday for pocketing a woman’s six smartphones worth 71,900 patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) Leng Kam Lon said at a press briefing yesterday.
The 31-year-old jobless suspect is surnamed Ng.
According to Leng, a woman reported to the Judiciary Police on Wednesday that she had been cheated by a man who claimed that he could help her take six smartphones worth 71,900 patacas across the border to the mainland last week. The woman told the police that she bought the smartphones in a phone shop in the northern district on June 25. She wanted to take the phones to her relatives in the mainland but was unable to do it herself. She called a friend for help but she was unable to reach the friend. Ng was outside the phone shop at that time and approached the woman, telling her that he could help her take the phones to the mainland for which she would just need to “buy him a meal.”’
Leng said that the woman asked a relative to take the phones to the Barrier Gate checkpoint and meet Ng there on Wednesday. Her relative handed the phones to Ng, after which they were to go through customs together. However, when they were about to pass through customs, Ng told the victim’s relative that he had to go to the toilet and asked the relative to go through customs first and that both would meet at Zhuhai’s Gongbei checkpoint afterwards. However, Ng didn’t show up so the relative told the victim about it and she reported the case to the police.
According to Leng, PJ officers identified Ng and arrested him on Thursday when he entered Macau at the Barrier Gate checkpoint. The officers seized three smartphones from Ng’s home in the northern district. Ng told the officers that he had sold three of the phones in the mainland for 6,500 yuan. Leng said the Judiciary Police were continuing their investigation to locate the other three phones and the ill-gotten money.
Ng was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, facing a fraud charge, according to Leng.
