A criminal gang pretending to be a waterproofing contractor cheated at least five locals out of a total of 83,600 patacas between April and June last year, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference yesterday.
The Judiciary Police received separate reports from the victims between April 17 and June 12 last year about a home improvement scam, all saying that they suspected they had fallen victim to a “waterproofing contractor”, which they contacted via a social media platform, according to Chan.
Among the victims, two of them, who live in different flats – one above the other – in a residential building on Avenida de Horta e Costa, told the police that they contacted the “waterproofing contractor” through an online advertisement after they found water leakage in their flats’ bathrooms. The two victims said that two “waterproofers” went to their flats to conduct “tests”, after which they told them that the water leakage problems could be solved by 20 catties of waterproofing materials at 780 patacas per catty, totalling 15,600 patacas.
Chan quoted the two victims as saying that after nearly an hour of injecting certain materials into the leakage site in the bathroom of one of the flats, the two “waterproofers” demanded 73,000 patacas for a total of over 40 kg of the materials. Because of the price hike, the other flat’s owner immediately stopped the duo from injecting the materials into his flat’s bathroom, Chan added.
The two victims eventually paid a total of 26,000 patacas after the two “waterproofers” claimed that their original quotation was calculated based on the mainland’s catty measurement, according to Chan.
One market catty (쏙) equals 500 grams in the mainland. In Hong Kong and Macau, one catty (pronounced “gan” in Cantonese) traditionally equals 604.78982 grams.
Less than a month after the completion of the project, the flat’s bathroom continued to show signs of water leakage, Chan said.
According to Chan, the Judiciary Police arrested one of the “waterproofers” on Sunday upon his arrival in Macau via the Hengqin border checkpoint.
The suspect, aged 30, is surnamed Sheng, Chan said, adding that under questioning the suspect admitted that he had been instructed by a criminal gang in the mainland to commit the crimes in Macau, confessing that he had been promised 30 percent of each project’s income as his commission, while the rest would be handed to the gang.
Sheng was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of organised crime and fraud involving a considerably large amount of money, Chan noted.
Chan said that the market price of the materials used by the two purported waterproofers was about 30 yuan (34 patacas) per kg.
The hooded male waterproofing scam suspect from the mainland is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape after yesterday’s special press conference. – Photo: Yuki Lei
