A 74-year-old Portuguese man was arrested at the local airport on Thursday night for cheating a local woman in her fifties out of HK$1,778,000, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference on Friday.
Chan said that the suspect surnamed Lei, who holds a Portuguese passport, was born in Macau and speaks Cantonese, but does not have a permanent Macau ID card.
The victim told the police that she met Lei at a Cantonese restaurant in the city centre in November 2018, adding that Lei often wore designer clothing and luxury-brand watches and touted his “luxurious life” in Thailand, misleading the victim into thinking he was a rich man, according to Chan.
From August 2019 to June 2021, Lei, who told the police he’s a retiree, told the victim through “WeChat” that he would send her a luxury-brand watch, adding that he had also won a big lottery prize and made profits from his investments and that he would transfer part of the money to her. However, he demanded that the victim pay the purported freight costs, customs duties and collection fees for claiming the prize. Later, Lei asked her to transfer money urgently to cover his living expenses on the grounds of “being forced to stay in Guangzhou due to the COVID-19 pandemic”, said Chan.
Convinced that Lei was a wealthy man, the victim transferred between November 2019 and June 2021 a total of HK$1,778,000 in 55 remittances to him, with each transaction ranging from HK$10,000 to HK$60,000, from a shop in the city centre to a bank account in Thailand designated by Lei, according to Chan.
Chan pointed out that as the victim did not receive the promised luxury-brand watch or any money from Lei, she finally suspected that she had been cheated so she reported the case to the Judiciary Police on June 16, 2021.
The Judiciary Police identified the suspect as Lei, and arrested him when he entered Macau on Thursday night via the local airport.
Under questioning, Chan said, Lei admitted to committing the crime, insisting that he had spent all the cash received from the victim on his daily life in Thailand.
Lei was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, facing a charge of fraud involving a considerably large amount.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the hooded fraud suspect claiming to be a “rich Portuguese man” to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape on Friday. – Photo: Maria Cheang Ut Meng
