Four mainland men were arrested on Thursday for robbing two compatriots of HK$410,000 at a hotel guestroom in Taipa, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lou Chan Fai said during a special press conference on Saturday.
According to Lou, the four suspects, aged between 25 and 33, are surnamed Chen, Li, Yi and Zhang, while the two male victims, both surnamed Huang, are aged 21 and 23.
Lou added that Chen, a purchaser, Li, who owns a ski resort, and Yi, who is in charge of a media company, as well as the two victims, a businessman and a student respectively, are Zhang’s friends.
Lou said the Judiciary Police were notified by the Public Security Police (PSP) in the wee hours of Thursday that a robbery had occurred in a hotel in Taipa, so PJ officers were dispatched to the scene, where they spoke to the two victims and a friend of the duo, surnamed Liu, who is also Zhang’s friend and witnessed the robbery. Lou added that the officers also intercepted Zhang and Yi, who were also there, upon arriving at the scene.
Based on the quintet’s respective confessions, Lou said, Zhang, the two victims and Liu arrived in Macau on April 2 to gamble in local casinos, adding that Zhang lost HK$180,000 on the same day when playing “3-Card Brag” with the trio at a hotel guestroom in Taipa.
According to Lou, assuming that the card game was a scam arranged by the two victims, Zhang contacted Yi, Chen and Li to come to Macau to rob the two victims together with him.
Zhang asked Liu and the two victims to come to his room under the pretext of playing poker on Thursday, Lou said, adding that when the victims each placed HK$260,000 and HK$150,000 on the table at 2 a.m. that day, Zhang grabbed all the cash on the table and rushed out of the guestroom. At the same time, the two victims moved forward to stop him, while Yi, Chen and Li who were standing by outside rushed into the room to stop the duo from catching Zhang.
The six people got into a fight in the room, according to Lou, who pointed out Chen and Li managed to flee the scene, while Zhang and Yi were stopped by the two victims, who then called the police, reporting a loss of HK$410,000 in cash.
The Judiciary Police identified Chen and Li, and discovered that the former took a taxi alone to gamble in a casino in the Macau peninsula, and then returned to his guestroom at a casino-hotel resort in Taipa, while the latter got into another taxi to gamble in different casinos in both the Macau peninsula and Taipa. PJ officers arrested the duo in a guestroom and a casino respectively on Thursday, Lou said.
Under questioning, Zhang admitted that part of the money he robbed from the two victims was handed over to his accomplices, while Yi, Chen and Li claimed that in order to help Zhang get back the money they suspected their friend had been cheated out of by the two victims, they went to the guestroom to rob the two victims, according to Lou.
During the operation, the Judiciary Police recovered HK$98,000, and HK$100,000 from Zhang and Yi respectively, and seized chips worth HK$50,000 from Chen, Lou said, adding that Li insisted that he had gambled away the HK$59,000 in cash he had robbed from the two victims.
Lou also said that Zhang, Yi, Chen and Li were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Saturday, where each faces a robbery charge.
Evidence seized from the four robbery suspects from the mainland such as HK$4.1 million in cash is displayed by two Judiciary Police (PJ) officers during Saturday’s special press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Maria Cheang Ut Meng
