A 60-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday for cheating a shop on Estrada dos Cavaleiros out of a bottle of Moutai worth 2,130 patacas, a Public Security Police (PSP) spokesperson said during a regular press conference on Friday.
Moutai (aka Maotai) is a style of baijiu, a distilled Chinese liquor, made in the town of Maotai in Guizhou province.
According to the spokesperson, the Public Security Police received a report from the shop on February 19 that a man, who went to the shop to buy Moutai on February 17, told an employee that he or she made a mistake with his change after he had paid for a bottle of Moutai, requesting the employee to check the shop’s CCTV footage. While the employee scrutinised the CCTV footage, the spokesperson said, the man took the opportunity to put a bottle of Moutai in his coat pocket, after which he claimed that he had not received his bottle of Moutai that he had paid for and asked the employee to hand over another bottle of Moutai.
The spokesperson added that the employee discovered what had happened when he or she was counting the stock.
The gender of the employee was not released by the police.
Thanks to the city’s CCTV surveillance system, PSP officers identified a building’s security guard surnamed Chang as the local suspect and summoned him to a police station on Tuesday for questioning, according to the spokesperson.
The spokesperson said that Chang, who admitted to committing the crime, insisted that he had sold one of the two bottles in the mainland for about 2,300 patacas, while he had drunk the other one.
Chang has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a fraud charge, the spokesperson noted.
This undated handout photo provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) during Friday’s regular press conference shows the fraud suspect being escorted by a PSP officer to a police vehicle.
