The Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested two mainland men in their thirties on Monday for their alleged connections with a criminal gang using fake gaming chips to cheat a casino in Cotai out of at least HK$5.675 million, PJ spokeswoman Lei Hon Nei said during a special press conference yesterday.
The gambling fraud, according to Lei, was not discovered until about 8 p.m. on Monday by an on-duty dealer, who told PJ officers arriving at the scene upon receiving the report that when he or she collected chips from the gaming table, he or she found that 10 of them with a face value of HK$10,000 each were “more rough” than normal ones, later confirming that the 10 HK$10,000 chips were counterfeits.
The dealer’s gender was not revealed during yesterday’s press conference.
Lei noted that on that day 493 bogus HK$10,000 chips were discovered at the casino.
The follow-up PJ investigation showed that 10 gamblers were found to be in possession of a total of 17 bogus HK$10,000 chips, which, Lei said, they were believed to have been exchanged by the gamblers with members of the gang.
After scrutinising the casino’s CCTV system, according to Lei, the Judiciary Police discovered that a total of eight members of the gang had gambled with fake chips in the casino on that day, with six of them fleeing to the mainland through the Barrier Gate border checkpoint after their two accomplices, 35-year-old Huan and 31-year-old Ye, were intercepted in the vicinity of the casino. En route to the mainland, Lei added, the six suspects discarded some of their personal belongings and some of their counterfeit chips in a rubbish bin in Praça das Portas do Cerco outside the Barrier Gate checkpoint
Lei noted that in addition to the 182 bogus HK$10,000 chips and 14 genuine HK$50,000 chips, as well as five real HK$1,000 chips seized from the two suspects, PJ officers also recovered more than 112 fake chips and two genuine HK$10,000 chips from the Macau Solid Waste Incineration Centre in Taipa, totalling 804 counterfeit chips.
Under questioning, Huan refused to cooperate with the police, while Ye admitted to spending hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy 100 fake chips before receiving the bogus chips in Macau.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of organised crime and fraud involving a considerable amount of money.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the two hooded fraud suspects to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: MPDG
