Two local men falsely accused a parallel trading shop of cheating them after the mainland Customs Services had seized the central processing unit (CPU) they were attempting to smuggle to Zhuhai, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong said in a regular press conference on Monday.
The suspects are surnamed Iun and Lao, both being in their sixties. Iun told the police that he’s jobless while Lao is a renovation worker.
According to Chong, Iun and Lao told the police that they had been scammed by a parallel trading shop in the Areia Preta district earlier this month. The duo claimed that the shop had promised them 1,500 patacas provided that they smuggled a dozen CPUs to the mainland, but they needed to first give 120,000 yuan (140,000 patacas) to the shop owner as a security deposit.
After the smuggling, the duo claimed that the owner did not pay them their “compensation” nor return the purported security deposit.
Police officers found their claims suspicious as they could not explain why the security deposit was so much larger than the value of the CPUs. Under interrogation, the duo finally admitted to falsely accusing the owner since the actual 156 CPUs they smuggled were confiscated by mainland customs officers and the owner refused to compensate half of the loss demanded by the suspects.
The duo added that they planned to blackmail the shop owner into compensating them by falsely accusing him or her.
Iun and Lao have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing charges of making false accusations, according to Chong.
