The Public Security Police (PSP) arrested two men from the mainland early this week for stealing goods worth 2,600 patacas from a supermarket in Zape along with another man still at large, a PSP spokesperson announced during a regular press conference yesterday.
The two suspects in their forties, surnamed Wang and Xi, told the police that they are unemployed.
According to the spokesperson, the supermarket staff discovered on Sunday that goods worth 2,600 patacas had disappeared from the supermarket shelves without having been paid for. After scrutinising CCTV footage, the spokesperson said, the staff confirmed that three men entered the supermarket on Thursday last week and on Sunday. Each time, they put a number of items into their bags and left without paying.
After seeing the three shoplifters on CCTV footage, the supermarket reported the case to the police on Sunday.
The spokesperson said that after scrutinising the supermarket’s CCTV footage and the police forces’ citywide CCTV camera system, PSP officers identified the three shoplifters, after which the police caught two of them in a residential flat in Zape on Monday.
Under questioning, the spokesperson said, the two men admitted that they, with another man, had shoplifted in the supermarket after gambling away all their money. The two men told the police that the stolen goods had been taken to the mainland by their accomplice.
The Public Security Police were still looking for the “third man” at the time of yesterday’s press conference.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson said, the PSP officers discovered that there were many beds in the flat in Zape where the two shoplifters were staying, because of which they suspected that the unit was an illegal inn. The police reported the case to the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) for investigation, after which MGTO inspectors confirmed that the flat was being used as an illegal inn.
This undated handout photo released by the Public Security Police (PSP) yesterday shows two PSP officers escorting the two shoplifters to the PSP headquarters, which is also the No. 2 PSP station, in Zape.
