Two mainlanders were arrested last week for cheating a mainland man out of 51,600 yuan in a currency exchange deal involving 199 Hong Kong dollar practice notes, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Mark Sou Sio Keong said at a regular press conference on Monday.
Practice bank notes are similar in size, shape and colour to genuine banknotes and are used to train bank tellers and cashiers.
The two suspects are a 29-year-old jobless man surnamed Sun and a 36-year-old jobless woman surnamed Liu who holds a forged mainland resident ID card. They told the police that they are friends.
According to Sou, an employee of a casino in Zape told Judiciary Police (PJ) officers on duty at the casino in the wee hours of last Thursday that a 27-year-old mainland male tourist had used 50 HK$1,000 practice notes in exchange for chips. PJ officers seized another 10 practice notes from the man when they detained him at the casino. Under questioning, the tourist told the police that he had met two mainlanders last Tuesday at the casino who told him that they could assist in exchanging currency and struck a deal to exchange 51,600 yuan into HK$60,000. The tourist said that he had transferred the yuan via his smartphone payment app to the account of one of the two mainlanders, after which the duo gave him “Hong Kong dollars in cash”. After getting the cash, the tourist said he did not check or count the money and went to the cage to exchange the cash into chips, and that’s when the cage cashier discovered that the cash consisted of Hong Kong dollar practice notes.
Thanks to CCTV footage, PJ officers identified and located the two suspects who were staying at a hotel in Zape. Officers put the hotel under surveillance and arrested Sun on Thursday morning and Liu at noon on the same day in her room at the hotel.
PJ officers seized 139 HK$1,000 practice notes and a forged mainland resident ID card in Liu’s name were found in her room. Both refused to cooperate with the police, according to Sou.
Sou said that the CCTV footage confirmed that the tourist was merely negligent as he did not check the banknotes before handing them to the cage cashier. That’s why the Judiciary Police decided to regard him as a victim in the case.
Sun and Liu were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) last Thursday, both facing fraud charges, while Liu also faces a document forgery charge, according to Sou.
