A local man and a woman were arrested on Thursday for entering into a sham marriage for which she paid him HK$40,000, Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Choi Iok Kin said at a regular press conference on Monday.
The male suspect surnamed Cheang and the female suspect surnamed Guo are in their forties. They told the police that they are construction workers.
According to Choi, the Identification Services Bureau (DSI) informed the Public Security Police (PSP) recently that it suspected that Cheang was involved in two sham marriages.
Cheang married Guo, a mainlander, in the mainland in March 2007 and applied for her to move to Macau for a family reunion. Guo obtained her local residency status in October 2011. Cheang and Guo divorced in January 2013.
Cheang married a mainland woman surnamed Du in June 2014 in the mainland and also applied for her to move to Macau for a family reunion. Both cases were transferred to the PSP Border Control Department for investigation.
According to Choi, PSP officers searched Cheang’s home in Rua do Padre Eugénio Taverna last Thursday and discovered that there were none of Du’s belongings in the flat. He was unable to say anything about Du and her daily life in the mainland. After questioning, Cheang confessed that their marital relationship was fake. He told the police that due to a lack of work he did not earn anything for a long time in 2014. At that time, Cheang told the police, he met a “middleman” in a casino who told him that by “marrying” a mainland woman surnamed Du he could earn HK$40,000. The middleman also told him that after entering in to the fake marriage he would be able to continue his life as before.
Under the arrangement, Cheang continued to live in Macau, while Du remained in the mainland, awaiting the family reunion application to be approved, a process that takes several years. The application has still not been approved so Du still lives in the mainland.
Under questioning by the police, Cheang also confessed that his marriage to Guo was also fake. Afterwards, PSP officers contacted Guo who admitted that their marriage was a sham. She told the police that she gave a middleman 100,000 yuan to marry Cheang in 2007 to help her obtain Macau residency status. Cheang received HK$40,000 from the middleman for his “service”. PSP officers are continuing to investigate other suspects involved in the two cases, the two intermediaries in particular, according to Choi.
Cheang and Guo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, facing document forgery and false statement charges, according to Choi.
This Chinese-language diagram provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) on Monday shows how the two sham marriages involving the three suspects – Guo (left), Cheang (centre) and Du – came about.
