Police arrested a mainland chef for defrauding a woman out of 1.13 million yuan (1.36 million patacas) and HK$1.8 million in investment scams, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Lam said during a regular press conference yesterday.
Ho said the 44-year-old suspect surnamed Wu is a male non-resident worker (NRW) who told the police he works as a chef.
According to Ho, the local female victim met Wu in May last year and Wu persuaded her to invest in a “catering business” in Zhuhai, saying that it was very profitable. Ho said that the victim gave Wu 1.13 million yuan for the “investment”, but no contract was signed.
The victim refused to invest more upon Wu’s request since she complained there was no “investment protection”, Ho said, adding that Wu had paid her a few thousand yuan as “profit”.
According to Ho, soon after the first investment, Wu asked the victim to invest in a “currency exchange business” in Macau and the mainland. Wu claimed that for every HK$1 million exchanged, the business would yield a HK$20,000 profit and the two would split the profit fifty-fifty, Ho said
The victim fell for the high profit rate and gave HK$1.8 million to Wu as investment, Ho said, adding that Wu never gave the money back when she demanded it several times. Realising that she might have been scammed, the victim reported both cases to the police on December 6 last year.
Meanwhile, Ho said that on May 23 this year a man from the mainland reported to the police that Wu had borrowed HK$200,000 from him on February 7 for “currency exchange”. When the male victim asked for the money back later, Wu claimed that he had gambled away the HK$200,000, Ho said, after which Wu severed all contact with the victim.
According to Ho, Wu was apprehended when he entered Macau through the Macau-Hengqin checkpoint on Sunday. Wu denied the accusations and was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Tuesday for follow-up investigation, facing fraud charges, Ho said.
