Gang earned at least 8.3 million patacas
Police in Macau, Hong Kong and Guangdong on Thursday together cracked down on a cross-border criminal gang using a website promoting prostitution, resulting in the arrest of 19 gang members, among five men and two women who were nabbed in various local districts by the Judiciary Police (PJ) on suspicion of organised crime membership and pimping.
The local suspects allegedly posted prostitution-related notices on the website, delivered prostitution paraphernalia and helped register phone cards for clients to communicate with prostitutes.
On Friday, the Judiciary Police held a special press conference about the case, during which PJ spokesman Chong Kam Leong said that the joint operation between the three jurisdictions was launched after the interception in the peninsula’s Zape district of eight sex workers from the mainland by the Judiciary Police earlier this year, adding that the PJ investigations discovered that the eight women had promoted their services on the gang’s website.
Believing that the website and the prostitutes were controlled by a gang operating across Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, according to Chong, the Judiciary Police alerted their counterparts in the mainland and Hong Kong about the cases, and then formed a joint task force, under the coordination of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, to conduct an in-depth investigation which later identified the gang’s alleged kingpins as a Hong Kong man surnamed Chan and a mainland man surnamed Chen.
Chong said that according to the trilateral investigation, the website was established in 2022 with a premium membership system, whereby ordinary members needed to top up their virtual currency to become premium members before they could post solicitations for prostitutes, and that the mainland women were also required to pay 300 yuan each to update their clients through the website when arriving in Macau. Chong added that the website, including a large number of sexy photos, was divided into Macau and mainland sections, with no less than 24,000 posts published, and “if each post is calculated at 300 yuan, it is believed that the criminal gang earned at least 8.3 million patacas”, while the “service fee” charged by the prostitutes amounted to 500 patacas per session.
On Thursday morning, the Judiciary Police mobilised more than 70 PJ officers to arrest the seven local suspects – aged between 39 and 79 surnamed Lam, Chan, Lao, Wong, Ng, Ho and Liu – in various residential buildings, while intercepting 18 female prostitutes and two clients at two hotels in Zape, with the seizure of tens of thousands of patacas in cash, several mobile phones, a car, a motorcycle and a large amount of prostitution paraphernalia including over 10,000 condoms.
The mainland police arrested nine gang members, 17 prostitutes and seven clients in Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Shenzhen, while Hong Kong police arrested a male kingpin and two female gang members in Kowloon.
The Judiciary Police transferred on Friday the seven local suspects to the Pubic Prosecutions Office (MP) for further investigation.
This handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) on Friday shows PJ officers searching a hotel room used by the prostitution gang in Zape on Thursday.
