The mainland police transferred a local man involved in two fraud cases to the Judiciary Police (PJ) yesterday.
Concerning one of the fraud cases, a local court sentenced the man in absentia in 2017 to a prison term of three years and three months, according to a PJ spokesperson, who briefed reporters after the transfer of the 42-year-old man, surnamed Ho, in the area between Zhuhai’s Gongbei and Macau’s Barrier Gate border checkpoints. The spokesperson did not provide details about the case for which the man was sentenced in absentia.
Concerning the other case which still has to go to trial, the Judiciary Police – after receiving separate reports from seven victims – identified Ho as the suspect in August 2016 and confirmed that he had already absconded to the mainland at that time, according to the spokesperson, who added that Ho had recently been arrested in Guangzhou.
In the case still awaiting trial, the suspect was working as a real estate agent when he allegedly cheated the seven victims, all of them locals, between November 2015 and July 2016, according to the spokesperson.
The Judiciary Police received separate reports from the seven victims, the youngest being in their twenties and oldest in their sixties, in August 2016, each saying that a – Ho – had cheated them out of the down payments they had made to buy a flat – according to the spokesperson.
According to the spokesperson, the suspect cheated the seven people out of a total of HK$4.98 million. The case involving the seven victims involved five properties, the spokesperson said.
In the down payment scam, Ho claimed that he could help each of the victims invest in the property market by buying an existing or a presale flat, according to the spokesperson.
Ho asked each of the victims to pay a down payment to him for property deals that never materialised.
According to the spokesperson, Ho succeeded in cheating the seven victims by showing them forged purchase agreements, and by
conniving with accomplices who pretended to be the owners of the respective property units.
According to the spokesperson, the seven victims could no longer contact Ho after they had handed him their down payments, after which they separately reported the cases to the police.
After confirming that Ho had absconded to the mainland, the Judiciary Police contacted their counterparts on the mainland to request assistance, the spokesperson said.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers pose after mainland police officers transferred the hooded local fraud suspect to their local counterparts in the area between Zhuhai’s Gongbei and Macau’s Barrier Gate border checkpoints last night. Photo: Iong Tat Choi
