A couple of friends, who had cheated a property management company out of more than 600,000 patacas since 2019, were arrested on Thursday, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said during a special press conference on Friday.
The spokeswoman said that the local suspects, aged 72 and 67, are surnamed Fan and Lei respectively, adding that the former headed the company’s service operations, while the latter is a retiree.
The Judiciary Police received a report from the firm on March 20 they suspected that Fan had stolen part of the management fees collected from three residential buildings in the Areia Preta area, reporting a loss of 355,089 patacas. At the same time, the company also suspected that Fan had taken advantage of his position to “fake hire” his friend as an administrator, resulting in a loss of 253,936 patacas in wages, according to the PJ spokeswoman, who added that the 67-year-old suspect, who “joined” the company in October 2019 and resigned in July 2020, but then “re-joined” it again in February last year, had never worked in the company but supposedly received a salary every month.
She pointed out that a PJ investigation found that since late last year, Fan had “secretly” changed the procedure for collecting the three buildings’ management fees, requesting the respective administrators of the buildings to hand over all the management fees to him, which “he would then transfer to the company’s accountants”.
The PJ said that the investigation confirmed that Fan took part of the management fees for himself including the wages that he supposedly paid to his friend.
PJ officers arrested Fan on Thursday at a management company that he and another friend were running in Areia Preta district, where they seized a batch of receipts related to the case, the spokeswoman pointed out.
Under questioning, according to the PJ, Fan, who admitted to committing the crime, claimed that “he often advanced the company money for expenses from his own pocket during the time he was working for them, so he withheld part of the management fees to be used as expenses that needed to be paid by the company in the future.”
However, Fan finally confessed that he spent the money defrauded from the company on gambling and daily expenses. His friend, who was summoned to the PJ headquarters in Zape for questioning on Thursday, said that he did not receive any money from Fan for giving him his personal information so that he could “fake hire” him.
Lei and Fan were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, where they face charges of fraud, involving a considerable amount of money.
The two male hooded fraud suspects are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a vehicle on Friday. – Photo courtesy of TDM
