The local owner of a beverage shop and exhibition company and a mainland woman who worked for him were arrested separately at the shop and the company on Tuesday for their involvement in arranging fake employment by using at least five local residents’ identity information to apply for non-resident work permits – informally known as blue cards - which the female suspect allegedly sold for about 350,000 yuan in total, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lou Chan Fai said at a special press conference yesterday.
Five locals who gave their personal identity information to the duo were also arrested one after another.
The owner of the shop and the exhibition company is a 50-year-old local businessman surnamed Lam, while his employee is a 48-year-old woman from the mainland surnamed Wei who told the police that she worked as a marketing staff.
The five other local suspects aged between 31 and 75 comprise a salesman, driver, housewife, female retiree, and a jobless woman.
According to Lou, the Judiciary Police discovered while they were investigating a computer fraud case in September last year that one of the suspects in that case held a blue card but did not actually work in Macau. The suspect admitted that he or she had paid 100,000 yuan through an intermediary in the mainland to obtain the blue card. After the case had been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), the Judiciary Police started to investigate the beverage shop in the northern district the blue card holder supposedly worked for. The officers later discovered that the shop’s owner (Lam) and the marketing staff (Wei) also ran an exhibition company in Nape. The officers discovered that the two companies had falsely employed five locals and also applied for 11 non-resident work permits (blue cards).
Lou said that the Judiciary Police took action on Tuesday and went to both the shop and the exhibition company for further investigation. PJ officers discovered that out of the 11 non-resident workers, seven did not physically work for the shop and the exhibition company. The officers arrested Lam and Wei on the same day.
According to Lou, Lam admitted that he falsely employed local residents and paid their Social Security Fund dues. The fake local employment contracts were used by the shop and the exhibition company to apply for blue cards. Lam told the police that he had paid the Social Security Fund dues for at least five locals but denied that he paid them any “compensation” for letting him use their personal data. He also told the police that he did not know that Wei had “sold” the blue cards to mainlanders. Wei admitted that she had worked with intermediaries in the mainland who helped her look for mainlanders who wanted to “buy” blue cards for 100,000 yuan each. Wei said that she and the intermediaries split the money two ways. Wei told the police that she “had sold” the blue cards to seven mainlanders, illegally earning a total of 350,000 yuan which, she claimed, had been used for the operating costs of the shop and exhibition company.
Lou said that the Judiciary Police told the five “fake employees” to report to a police station for questioning. All of them admitted to providing their personal identity information to Lam and Wei in order to get the Social Security Fund’s benefits. However, they told the police that they did not know that Wei had “sold” blue cards to the mainlanders. Lou said that some of the mainlanders who “bought” the blue cards were currently in Macau, while the Judiciary Police were still looking for the whereabouts of other possible suspects.
Lam and Wei were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing document forgery and other charges. The other five suspects have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office, are facing document forgery charges, according to Lou.
Two of the seven document forgery suspects are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle in Zape yesterday. Photo courtesy of TDM
