Judiciary Police (PJ) officers arrested four mainlanders masquerading as building leakage prevention “experts” for suspected organised crime and fraud on Wednesday, PJ spokesman Leng Kam Lon during a special press conference yesterday.
Leng said all the four suspects are surnamed Sheng, aged 38, 35, 28 and 20, respectively, who told police that they were drivers (the ones aged 35 and 28), unemployed (the one aged 20) and a worker (the one aged 38).
Leng said that while the quartet are from the same place in the Chinese mainland, they are not related.
According to Leng, the Judiciary Police received a report from a local woman on October 4, claiming that she had been defrauded by a group of building leakage prevention “experts”.
Leng said the victim, who was affected by water leakage at home, found a company on Facebook claiming to be a local repair service. After contact via WhatsApp, the first two suspects went to her home for a purported on-site inspection, Leng said.
According to Leng, the suspects claimed the issue could be resolved by injecting waterproof glue into a “small hole”, quoting a price of 980 patacas per kilogramme.
Without revealing the total cost in advance, Leng said the two worked for about an hour and then claimed that “dozens” of kilogrammes of the glue had been used, demanding 58,000 patacas in cash.
Based on the price of 980 patacas per kilogramme quoted by the duo, and considering the final price of 58,000 patacas, they would have used 59.18 kilogrammes of the glue in filling the “small hole”.
Put under pressure by the two men, the victim paid up. Afterwards, she realised that the leakage problem had not improved at all, leading her to report the case to the Judiciary Police, Leng said.
According to Leng, a follow-up investigation confirmed that at least two more victims had been defrauded by the same gang. The investigating officers identified a gang composed of four mainlanders as the bogus “experts”. Leng pointed out that the 38-year-old suspect was the leader of the gang, tasked with recruiting clients online and arranging for his fellow gang members to carry out the fraud, i.e., the three other suspects travelled to Macau in batches to perform the purported repair work, Leng said.
PJ officers arrested the first three suspects at the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge (HZMB) Macau Port (border checkpoint) on Wednesday, while the fourth suspect was arrested on the same day in Zape.
Further investigation showed that the fourth suspect had been arrested in a similar case in 2023 for which he is still awaiting trial.
The gang of four were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday facing organised crime and fraud charges.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the four suspects to a PJ van outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: Armindo Neves
