Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam announced separately yesterday in a special press briefing a fraud case and a money laundering case, in which PJ officers have arrested a male non-resident worker (NRW) from the mainland and a 25-year-old Hong Kong woman when entering Macau via different checkpoints for, respectively, cheating mainlanders out of over 100,000 yuan (about 110,840 patacas) and assisting a fraud gang in depositing about 600,000 patacas into her bank account.
Fraud case
According to Ho, a male victim reported to the police on August 19 that he had been cheated by a man in his 40s surnamed Lo who had claimed that “he was able to assist mainlanders in finding work in Macau on construction sites, but it would cost 6,000 yuan [about 6,650 patacas] for each person”. The victim told the police that he had transferred 41,000 yuan on behalf of his seven relatives to Lo’s bank account between March 23 and April 19, adding that he lost contact with Lo after receiving a 3,000 yuan refund from him on July 20, reporting a loss of 38,000 yuan.
PJ officers arrested Lo when he was entering Macau via the Barrier Gate border checkpoint on Saturday, Ho said, adding that Lo claimed that he had gambled away all the money received from the victim. Lo also told the police that he had cheated other mainlanders out of about 70,000 yuan on several occasions, adding that he had withheld their identity documents whenever he received money from the victims.
Money laundering case
Meanwhile, a local woman reported to the Judiciary Police in August 2020 that she had fallen for an investment scam online, resulting in a loss of 1.099 million patacas.
Since then, PJ officers had identified several suspicious bank accounts according to which they discovered that the suspect surnamed Chou had received 600,000 patacas from the victim in her account, according to Ho, who noted that PJ officers arrested Chou when she was entering Macau via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) border checkpoint on Sunday.
Chou told the police that she had no idea about the money, insisting her bank card and password had been lost in May 2020, Ho said.
However, Ho added, a further investigation confirmed that the suspect had told a man in July 2020 by smartphone message that she could lend her bank account to him to collect money. So far hundreds of thousands of patacas have been transferred into the suspect’s bank account, Ho pointed out.
Both Lo and Chou were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing respective charges of fraud involving a considerably large amount of money and money laundering.
The hooded male fraud suspect (left) and Hong Kong female money-laundering suspect are escorted separately from the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape to a PJ vehicle after yesterday’s special press conference. – Photo: Yuki Lei
