The Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested a woman from the Chinese mainland for fraud on Saturday, PJ spokesman Lei Chi Hou said during a regular press conference yesterday.
Lei identified the suspect as a 30-year-old unemployed woman surnamed Wu. The victim was described as a middle-aged non-resident male.
Lei said that at around 2 a.m. on Thursday, the victim met Wu while gambling at a casino in Cotai. Wu told him that she had a gold bracelet and a gold necklace to sell at a low price.
The pair then went to a pawnshop in Taipa to have the items appraised. The pawnbroker valued the gold bracelet at around HK$28,000 (28,880 patacas) but did not appraise the necklace. Despite this, the pair agreed on a purchase price of HK$65,000 for both items, according to Lei.
The victim handed over HK$65,000 worth of casino chips to Wu and received the jewellery in return. After subsequently losing the rest of his gambling funds, the victim took the two pieces of jewellery to another pawnshop to hock them. However, he was informed that they were counterfeit and held no value.
Realising that he had been scammed, he reported the incident to the police. A PJ investigation revealed that Wu had initially presented a genuine gold bracelet for appraisal at the first pawnshop, but then swapped it for a counterfeit item before handing it over to the victim.
PJ officers intercepted Wu at the same casino in the early hours of Saturday, seizing a mobile phone and a gold bracelet suspected to be the genuine item used as a prop during the switch.
Wu has since been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) to face a charge of fraud.
This undated handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) yesterday shows a smartphone, two gold bracelets and a gold necklace seized by PJ officers from the fraud suspect on Saturday.
