A local woman in her nineties reported to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on September 20 last year that she had been cheated by a 69-year-old woman surnamed Cheong and a mainland man in his fifties out of 3.2 million patacas between 2016 and 2018 under the guise of investing in casinos’ VIP business segment, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference on Friday.
According to Chan, the victim, whose ancestral home is in Shanghai, met Cheong when she attended a hometown association meeting in 2016. Cheong, who told the police that she is unemployed, introduced the victim to the male suspect, who was still at large at the time of Friday’s press conference.
The male suspect’s surname was not released during the press conference.
The victim “fell in love with” the male suspect, Chan said. The couple met only a few times after they become lovers, and by 2019, the victim could no longer contact her “boyfriend”.
Soon after, Chan said, Cheong told the victim that her “boyfriend” had been detained by the mainland’s Public Security Bureau (PSB) for smuggling cultural relics and had to pay a “security deposit”. Persuaded by Cheong, Chan added, the victim re-mortgaged HK$1.3 million of her property in Macau, and handed over the money to her “boyfriend” through Cheong.
In late 2017, Cheong told the victim that her “boyfriend” planned to open a VIP casino room in Macau, but he was puportedly stopped by the customs when he was found bringing “a huge sum” of money to Macau, and had to pay a fine of HK$6 million before he could get the money back, persuading the victim to pay part of the fine – one million yuan. At the same time, the “boyfriend” also promised the victim that after opening the VIP room, she would be hired as the chief financial officer, while the money she lent him to pay his fine would be considered as a stake in the business, said Chan.
According to Chan, when the victim told Cheong that she did not have enough funds, Cheong immediately persuaded her to re-mortgage her property in Shenzhen for 700,000 yuan. The victim followed Cheong’s advice to re-mortgage the property, but when she signed the document, she discovered that the relevant re-mortgaging document was actually to sell it for a million yuan, which was transferred to her “boyfriend” through Cheong.
After a period of time, as the VIP room did not open “as scheduled”, the victim suspected that she had fallen for a love scam, so she reported the case to the police.
Chan said that the Judiciary Police arrested Cheong when she was about to leave Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint on Thursday.
Under questioning, Cheong denied committing the crime, insisting that she had just offered advice and assistance to the victim. Cheong also insisted that the money she got from the victim had been transferred to the victim’s “boyfriend”. Cheong insisted that she had merely been paid HK$100,000 by the victim’s “boyfriend”. She did not explain why she was paid the money.
Cheong was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office on Friday, facing a charge of fraud involving a considerably large amount.
Chan also said that the nonagenarian victim, whose exact age was not disclosed, had meanwhile passed way.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the hooded love scam suspect involving a nonagenarian victim to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape on Friday. – Photo: Maria Cheang Ut Meng
