A 27-year-old female non-resident worker (NRW) was arrested on Wednesday for cheating 13 colleagues out of HK$188,800 in a joint currency exchange deal, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson said during a special press conference yesterday.
The spokesperson pointed out that the suspect, surnamed Lu, worked as a health care assistant in a residential care home, while the victims are 12 females and one male, all of whom are middle-aged NRWs.
According to the spokesperson, Lu told the victims last Tuesday that she knew a currency exchange dealer in a casino who could exchange Hong Kong dollars into yuan at a preferential rate, persuading each of the 13 victims to transfer different HK dollar amounts to her account.
The victims transferred a total of HK$188,800 to Lu. However, the victims failed to receive any money from Lu for a period of time after the transfers, the spokesperson said, adding that Lu kept on postponing the transfers.
Lu later told the victims that the bank account of the purported “currency exchange dealer” was frozen, and asked the victims to continue waiting “patiently” for the money transfers. However, the victims still did not receive any money from Lu or the “currency exchange dealer”, the spokesperson said.
According to the spokesperson, the victims finally found the situation suspicious and reported it to the police last Monday. Afterwards, Lu reported to the police that she had been scammed by an unknown currency exchange dealer. The spokesperson said that Lu apparently did not know that the 13 victims had already reported the case to the police.
After receiving the report from the victims, PJ officers started investigating the case, confirming that Lu had conspired with the purported “money exchange dealer” to cheat her colleagues, and finally filed a false report to confuse the police investigation. Therefore, PJ officers decided to arrest her on the spot when she was reporting the “scam” to the police.
The spokesperson said that Lu has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a charge of fraud involving a considerably large amount of money.
The hooded female fraud suspect is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a vehicle after yesterday’s special press conference.
– Photo: Ginnie Liang
