Three illegal currency exchange dealers from the mainland, aged between 19 and 45, were arrested separately at a hotel in Cotai on Saturday for defrauding gamblers with “practice banknotes”, totalling a loss of 282,650 yuan (311,091 patacas), Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference yesterday.
According to Wikipedia, a practice banknote is generally similar in size, shape and colour to circulating banknotes and is used for training bank tellers, cashiers and staff at currency exchanges.
According to Chan, the three jobless suspects – a female and two males – are surnamed Zhang, Wei and Chen respectively.
The Judiciary Police received referrals from the Public Security Police (PSP), in which the three mainland victims told the police separately on Saturday about the “practice banknote” scams, all saying that they had contacted their respective illegal currency exchange dealers via a WeChat group, requesting to exchange yuan into Hong Kong dollars in order to gamble at a local casino. The three victims said that after they had transferred 140,000 yuan, 95,100 yuan and 47,550 yuan respectively to the currency exchange dealers’ bank accounts, they received wads of HK$1,000 practice banknotes from them, Chan noted.
In the three cases, the Judiciary Police seized a total of 1,500 practice banknotes, Chan said.
Under questioning, according to Chan, the three suspects insisted that they had no idea about the practice banknotes, adding that they had separately promised a “commission” of 3,000 yuan by a man whom they knew from WeChat to carry a backpack containing the “cash” from Zhuhai to Macau for their respective currency exchange deals.
The trio were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing respective charges of fraud involving a considerably large amount of money and fraud, Chan said.
Chan pointed out that the “practice banknotes” were “deliberately” bundled into a stack, adding that the Chinese characters for “practice banknotes” printed on them were covered with adhesive tape, which made it difficult for the victims to verify the banknotes’ authenticity at a quick glance.
Chan said that the Judiciary Police are further investigating whether the three suspects were hired by the same criminal gang.
Evidence seized from one of the three illegal currency exchange dealers, including HK$1,000 practice banknotes, is displayed during yesterday’s special press conference at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Yuki Lei
