Three mainlanders were arrested separately at a hotel-casino resort in Taipa on Saturday for their alleged involvement in three “practice banknote” scams, in which they cheated four gamblers out of a total of 420,400 yuan (474,007 patacas) earlier that day, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a special press conference yesterday.
The trio, aged 40, 37 and 31, are surnamed Luo, Qin and Zhang respectively, Ho said, adding that the Judiciary Police do not rule out that they were hired by the same criminal gang, as they all told the police separately that they had been promised a “commission” of 6,000 yuan by an “unknown” person, whom they got to know via WeChat”, for giving the “cash” that they brought from the mainland to the four mainland gamblers in an illegal currency exchange deal.
Among the four gamblers, two are couples, Ho added.
According to Ho, the four victims contacted on Saturday their respective illegal currency exchange dealers via a WeChat group to exchange 93,500 yuan, 186,800 yuan and 140,100 yuan for Hong Kong dollars. Ho pointed out that the quartet soon discovered that the wads of Hong Kong dollar notes that they had received from the three suspects were not legal tender but practice banknotes used for training purposes by banks and other businesses.
Luo, Qin and Zhang, who insisted that they were not aware of the practice banknotes, were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud involving a considerably large amount of money, Ho said.
The three hooded male mainlanders suspected of practice banknotes fraud are escorted by police officers from the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape to a vehicle after yesterday morning’s special press conference about Macau’s latest case involving practice banknotes. – Photo: Yuki Lei
