A pair of friends from the mainland was arrested separately at a casino-hotel resort on Saturday for cheating two male gamblers out of a total of 265,440 yuan (292,346 patacas) in a “HK dollar practice notes” scam, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong said during a special press conference yesterday.
In the two operations, Chong said, PJ officers seized a total of 400 practice banknotes from the two suspects.
According to Chong, the female and male suspects, aged 39 and 47, are surnamed Chen and Yu respectively. The two illegal currency exchange dealers told the police that they had each been promised a commission of 3,000 yuan for “exchanging” the practice banknotes that they received from “someone” in Zhuhai.
A PJ investigation showed that the two victims had separately contacted their respective illegal currency exchange dealers via a WeChat group on Saturday, asking to exchange 189,600 yuan and 75,840 yuan into Hong Kong dollars. Both victims told the police that after transferring the money into mainland bank accounts designated by Chen and Yu respectively, they each received a wad of practice banknotes from the duo, with only the Hong Kong dollar note on the top of the two wads being genuine.
Chong said that the Judiciary Police believed that both Chen and Yu were hired by the same criminal gang to defraud its victims with practice banknotes.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing organised crime and fraud charges.
A practice banknote is generally similar in size, shape and colour to circulating banknotes. It is used for training bank tellers, cashiers and staff at currency exchanges, according to Wikipedia.
The two hooded fraud suspects from the mainland are escorted by police officers from the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape to a vehicle. – Photo: Yuki Lei
