A local man surrendered to the police on Tuesday for cheating 10 victims out of 1.6 million patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lou Chan Fai said at a special press conference yesterday.
The 51-year-old suspect surnamed Chong told the police that he is jobless.
According to Lou, 10 locals, comprising four men and six women, reported separately to the Judiciary Police between January 13 and December 10 this year that they had been cheated by the person-in-charge of a decoration company surnamed Chong out of about 1.6 million patacas in total.
The company is located in Rua da Praia do Manduco.
Lou said that the victims told the police that they found out about the company last year on the internet, or it was recommended to them by others, about its promotion decoration package ranging between 200,000 and 300,000 patacas. The package offered was about 30 percent cheaper than the usual market price. The company claimed that the work would be completed in three months. The victims paid 45 percent of the total price as a down payment between May and December last year. Chong told them that the remaining balance should be paid after the completion of the work. However, Chong later demanded the victims pay the balance in advance after part of the decoration had been done. After the victims made their payments, Chong started to delay or even stopped the work, and later they were unable to contact Chong so they reported their cases one-by-one to the police.
According to Lou, the Judiciary Police discovered that the decoration company closed down at the end of last year. On Tuesday, Chong went to a police station to turn himself in. He told the police that he had set up a furniture factory in the mainland in 2018, but he was unable to run the business well and therefore accumulated debts. He then opened a decoration company offering favourable packages to attract clients. After the clients had paid about two million patacas, he used 560,000 patacas for the decoration work and embezzled the remaining to cover his furniture factory’s deficit. However, he was unable to continue the decoration projects due to lack of funds. Afterwards, he hid in different places in Macau. Chong’s family members later persuaded him to surrender to the police. The Judiciary Police are continuing their investigation into the whereabouts of the ill-gotten money, adding that there might be more victims.
Chong was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing a fraud charge, according to Lou.
The hooded fraud suspect is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle in Zape yesterday. Photo: Camy Tam
