Police last week busted three mail suspects, two from the mainland and one from Macau, providing water leakage repair services and gouging customers with repeatedly raised prices, who scammed victims out of a total of 82,000 patacas, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman said at a special press conference on Friday.
The spokesperson identified the suspects as Lu, a 25-year-old who told police that he is a stall holder, and Wang, a 37-year-old decoration worker. The duo undertook water leakage repair works in the name of an engineering company located in Zape which is owned by a 58-year-old local man surnamed Hong.
According to the spokesperson, a resident – one of the victims – read an online advertisement on July 16 for a “professional engineering company” that claimed to offer water leakage repair services.
After the victim contacted the “company”, Lu and Wang arrived at the victim’s home and said that they would inject waterproofing material into the wall to fix the leakage, priced at 800 patacas per pound, quoting a total price of a few thousand patacas.
After finishing the work, the duo told the resident that they had injected 30 pounds of waterproofing material and that the total cost was 24,000 patacas instead.
The victim bargained with the duo and paid them 16,000 patacas, after which the victim discovered an online statement by Judiciary Police asking residents to be wary of a water leakage scam, while the victim also found that the leakage was not fixed. So, the victim reported the case to the police on July 17.
Meanwhile, two other victims separately reported to the police that they had faced price gouging on July 13 and July 16, pointing out that the same duo had charged them several times higher than the quoted original price. The two victims together ended up paying a total of 66,000 patacas to the fraudsters.
According to the spokesperson, the three suspects got to know each other on the internet and used the owner’s engineering company to place advertisements on an online platform to attract victims. The owner received 10 to 20 percent of the project fee each time, while the online platform received half of the project fee.
The Judiciary Police continue to investigate the relationship between the online platform and the suspects, according to the spokesperson.
The trio were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing charges of organised crime and fraud involving a considerable amount of money, while Hong faces an illegal employment charge.
Evidence seized from the three suspects such as two pails of water-proofing material, tools and banknotes is displayed at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters on Friday. – Photo courtesy of TDM
