A local woman working for a trading company in the Barrier Gate area stole her employer’s cosmetic products worth 1,761,500 patacas earlier this year and sold them for over a million patacas in total, gambling away the ill-gotten gains, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a press conference yesterday.
The 41-year-old suspect surnamed Lao is now unemployed. She started to work for the trading firm in mid-March last year to assist the owner in running the business.
According to Ho, the owner of a trading firm reported to the Judiciary Police on January 9 that his company staff (Lao) had stolen some of the firm’s cosmetics products worth over 1.7 million patacas. He told the police that as he spends most of his time in the mainland he hired Lao in March last year to take full charge of his firm in Macau. In January 8 this year, he discovered that some of the firm’s cosmetic products had gone missing and he asked Lao about it. Lao admitted that she had sold the products without his permission but promised to pay him back the money. However, the owner was unable to contact Lao the next day so he reported the case to the police.
Ho said that the Judiciary Police told Lao to report to a police station on Tuesday morning to assist in the investigation. Under questioning. Lao admitted to stealing the products from time to time and selling them at favourable prices for over one million patacas in total. Lao told the police that she had used most of the money to gamble and part of it on her daily expenses. She claimed that has been addicted to gambling since September last year.
Lao was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Tuesday, facing charges of abuse of trust, involving a very large amount of money, officially defined as exceeding 150,000 patacas, according to Ho.
