Eight suspected gang members were arrested separately on Tuesday for their involvement in a scheme that used debit cards to buy expensive items to cover up money laundering activities, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon said at a special press conference yesterday.
The eight suspects comprise two key members, one of whom is a 44-year-old owner of a local car dealership surnamed Ng, while the other is a 31-year-old jobless man from the mainland surnamed Li. The six other suspects comprise three local men and three mainlanders aged between 33 and 61.
According to Leng, the Judiciary Police had recently received intelligence that a criminal gang was using debit card accounts to deposit funds obtained from online fraud cases to buy expensive items in Macau which they then sold as a cover for the gang’s money laundering activities.
Leng said that a smartphone shop in the Barrier Gate area reported to the Judiciary Police in mid-February that it had received information from a bank that fraudsters had purchased large quantities of smartphones from the shop with debit cards funded by online fraud. Therefore, the bank froze the money earnt by the shop from selling the phones. The shop reported a loss of 272,000 patacas in total. The Judiciary Police later discovered that the two cases – the intelligence received by the police and the information received from the shop – were committed by the same gang, after which they launched an in-depth investigation.
During the Judiciary Police’s investigation, another smartphone shop in the Barrier Gate area informed the police that the shop had been cheated in the same way, reporting a loss of 406,000 patacas in total, according to Leng.
Leng said that PJ officers investigating the three cases discovered that all were committed by a cross-border gang set up by locals and mainlanders. The gang members transferred their illegal gains from online fraud cases to a number of debit card accounts. They then used their debit cards to buy large quantities of expensive items in Macau and sold them in order to cover up the origin of their ill-gotten gains. The gang purchased 109 phones in total from at least four shops for a total of 1.109 million patacas, Leng said.
According to Leng, PJ officers identified some the gang members and took action on Tuesday. The officers arrested eight suspects separately in the Barrier Gate area, at the Macau-Hengqin border checkpoint, in two casino-hotel resort hotels in Cotai and the car dealership in San Kio district. The suspects refused to cooperate with the police. The officers discovered that each of the gang members had their own role to play and Ng’s car dealership was used as the gang’s storeroom for the expensive goods they had purchased before selling them.
During the operation, the officers seized evidence such as 23 debit cards, confiscated two vehicles, and a large amount of high-end audio equipment with an estimated retail price of more than one million patacas in total from the car dealership. The Judiciary Police are continuing their investigation into the case to look for possible suspects and the whereabouts of the ill-gotten gains, Leng said.
The eight fraud suspects were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of organised crime and money laundering, according to Leng.
Six of the eight hooded organised cross-border gang members are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle yesterday. Photos courtesy of TDM
Evidence seized from the organised gang members such as cash, debit cards and 11 smartphones is displayed at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters during yesterday’s press conference headed by PJ spokesman Leng Kam Lon.
