A local man was arrested last Thursday night for cheating 16 victims out of 2.93 million patacas in a sales scam, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lou Chan Fai said at a special press conference last Friday.
The 38-year-old suspect surnamed Chan told the police that he is unemployed. The 16 victims comprise 15 locals and a non-resident worker aged between 29 and 81. Lou said many of them are elderly living in tenement buildings in the northern district.
According to Lou, 16 victims (nine men and seven women) reported separately to the Judiciary Police and the Public Security Police (PSP) between last Tuesday and last Thursday that they had been cheated out of a total of 2.93 million patacas between them in sales scams. They told the police that a man who claimed to be a TV network repairman of an antenna company went door-to-door to promote and sell TV set-top boxes, offering free gifts such as computer tablets or smartphones. PJ officers discovered that the suspect had shown a fake employee ID to the victims when he visited their flats to sell the set-top boxes, asking them to pay an installation fee and deposit in advance ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of patacas. The man promised the victims that the deposit would be refunded to them after one month of the installation.
Lou said that after the suspect received the ill-gotten money, he did install the TV set-top boxes in the victims’ home. After one month, he went to the victims’ homes again and showed them a cheque claiming that his company had issued the cheque payable to more than one person. He told the victims to give him the difference in cash or by smartphone transfers ranging from 2,000 to 730,000 patacas. Chan also offered to “help” some of the elderly victims transfer the money online, asking them to tell him their account numbers as well as the passwords. Chan then transferred the victims’ money to his account. The victims later took the cheques to the bank to cash them and discovered that they were bad cheques. The victims contacted Chan who gave them different reasons to delay the refund. The victims later lost contact with Chan and reported their cases to the police.
According to Lou, PJ officers identified Chan as the suspect and arrested him in his flat on Thursday night in Rua do Almirante Sérgio (河邊新街). Chan refused to cooperate with the police. PJ officers seized evidence such as a number of cheques at Chan’s home as well as 300,000 patacas in cash. The Judiciary Police believe that Chan committed the crimes from November last year.
Chan was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) last Friday, facing a raft of charges such as fraud, issuing bounced cheques and money laundering, according to Lou.
The hooded fraud suspect is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle in Zape last Friday. Photo courtesy of TDM
Evidence seized from the fraud suspect such as cheques, cash, a smartphone and a fake employee ID is displayed at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters last Friday.
