Yuki Lei
After over nine months of investigations, the Judiciary Police (PJ), after analysing several money-laundering accounts, busted on Wednesday an investment fraud gang, transferring today five local residents – four males and a female including a university student – to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) for allegedly cheating at least 30 local residents out of over 27 million patacas.
PJ spokesman Lou Chan Fai said during yesterday’s special press conference that the five suspects – a 28-year-old man surnamed Fok, a 26-year-old man surnamed Cheong, a 34-year-old woman surnamed Cheong, a 26-year-old man surnamed Un and a 19-yea-old surnamed Kou – contacted at least 30 victims – two youngsters, 24 middle-aged and four senior citizens – through a purported stock investment chat group between December 20 last year and March this year. In the chat group, an "investment consultant" promoted a website through which the victims were lured into opening "investment accounts", and into which they transferred tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of patacas totalling 27 million patacas.
Lou quoted the victims as saying that they had initially received a return of several thousand patacas on their investments, adding that they did not report the case to the police until they failed to recover their capital and kept being persuaded by their “consultant” to increase their stakes.
Between January and August, 23 gang members were arrested one after another, and on Wednesday, under the co-ordination of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, Fok – the gang's alleged kingpin – was arrested in Zhuhai, according to Lou, who noted that the Judiciary Police separately intercepted the two Cheongs, Kou and Un at the Barrier Gate and Qingmao checkpoints and the workplace between late Wednesday and this early morning.
A PJ investigation showed, Lou noted, that Fok joined the gang in December last year, initially providing the gang with his personal bank account to collect at least HK$180,000 in fraudulent payments, then becoming the gang's kingpin earning a total of HK$75,000 from his fellow gang members who assisted him in collecting the fraudulent payments from the gang's victims.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Police also arrested on Wednesday two mainland men for cheating a local male senior citizen out of a total of 160,000 patacas in a “guess who I am” scam.
The two suspects, both in their twenties, surnamed Chen and Cheng, have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) today for further investigation.
Caption: Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the five hooded investment scam suspects to a vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape today. – Photo: Yuki Lei
