A local woman was arrested last Saturday for cheating a friend out of HK$280,000 last year, falsely claiming that her husband was ill, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The 65-year-old suspect surnamed Chu told the police that she is unemployed.
According to Lei, a woman reported to the Judiciary Police on June 15 that she was cheated by a local woman surnamed Chu out of HK$280,000. The victim told the police that a friend introduced her to Chu in May last year. Chu told her that she held multiple properties to earn rental income and she had a large amount of fixed term bank deposits.
Lei said Chu told the victim that her husband was ill and had to go to a Hong Kong hospital for surgery, and asked to borrow HK$280,000 from her for emergency use. Afterwards, Chu kept on making excuses about repaying her so she reported the case to the police.
According to Lei, PJ officers identified Chu and discovered that she left Macau on September 25. She was arrested last Saturday by the Public Security Police (PSP) when she returned to Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint.
Under questioning, Chu admitted that she was in urgent need of money and falsely claimed that her husband was ill. At the same time, she also falsely claimed that she had a number of properties and huge fixed-term deposits, to make the victim believe that it would be easy for her to repay any money she borrowed. She told the police that she had spent all the money that she borrowed from her friend.
However, the Judiciary Police are still checking what happened to the ill-gotten money, Lei said.
Chu has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a fraud charge, according to Lei.
