A mainland gambler was held against his will in a hotel guestroom in Cotai for over 32 hours after he failed to repay a loan-sharking gang HK$500,000, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Lei Chi Hou said on Friday.
Lei announced the case at a special press conference, saying that last Monday the victim borrowed HK$200,000 from two male loansharks under the condition of paying them 20 percent of his winnings as “interest”, adding that after gambling away all the money he had borrowed from the duo, the victim borrowed another HK$300,000 from them on the same terms, handing over his personal documents as collateral.
The duo received a total of HK$280,000 as “interest” from the victim, Lei noted.
According to Lei, the victim, who was unable to repay the loan, was taken by the two loansharks on Tuesday to a hotel guestroom in Cotai, where he was illegally imprisoned and forced to raise money to repay his loan.
The victim took the opportunity to secretly call a friend for help on Wednesday when he was taken by the two loansharks together with an accomplice to another hotel in Cotai for his second false imprisonment, Lei said, adding that the Judiciary Police rescued the victim after a total of 32 and 1/2 hours of illegal imprisonment, and caught the three suspects in the hotel.
Lei identified the three mainland suspects as two males and a female, aged between 28 and 38, surnamed Hu, Li, and Jin.
Lei said that under questioning, the three suspects refused to cooperate with the police, but there was evidence linking the trio to their involvement in usury, false imprisonment, and improper retention of another person’s identification and travel documents.
The trio were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday for further investigation, facing a range of criminal charges.
The three hooded loan-sharking suspects are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a police vehicle in Zape on Friday.
– Photo courtesy of TDM
