Crime | Casino public relations staff steals, drives taxi while under the influence

A local 31-year-old man, identified by the Public Security Police Force (PSP) as a public relations officer for a casino, has been detained by the PSP after allegedly stealing and driving a taxi vehicle from Ilha Verde to Taipa Island, the PSP spokesperson said yesterday during the regular joint police forces press conference.
The case occurred sometime between 00:00 and 6 a.m. of September 16, when the taxi driver noticed that his car had been stolen from a street in the Ilha Verde area.
According to the PSP, the driver, after reporting the theft to the police, managed to find the car parked in a street of Taipa Island. While he did not notice anything missing from the car, he saw that whoever took his car left a mobile phone inside the vehicle.
Making use of the footage from street surveillance cameras, the PSP identified the man who had taken the car, and on November 5 they requested he present himself to the authorities to testify.
The suspect admitted to the police that he had imbibed alcoholic drinks on the evening in question, and he could not remember the entire evening. However, he did admit that he remembered taking the car.
He has been presented to the Public Prosecutions Office to respond to the accusation of vehicle theft.

Phone scam continues to make victims
In a separate report, the Judiciary Police (PJ) reported two separate cases of a common phone scam in which people are led to believe that they had been implicated in money laundering and financial fraud schemes.
The victims then transfer money into a given bank account, allegedly managed by the judiciary authorities of the mainland, believing that they are cooperating with the investigation. Only subsequently do they learn that they have lost all those transferred assets.
In yesterday’s press conference the PJ reported the cases of two women from the mainland, both in their thirties, who fell victim to this scam.
One of them is a non-resident worker in Macau, originally from Shandong province, the other is a tourist from Fujian province.
They claim to have lost an accumulated amount of RMB420,200 from which RMB397,000 belonged to the second victim.
The first victim, the non-resident worker in Macau lost only RMB23,200 that she had borrowed from her brother as she did not have funds to pay the full RMB268,000 requested by the alleged mainland authorities.

Part-time job working from home scam
A third scam was also reported by the PJ. This one involves a local woman who is said to have been lured into an alleged part-time job she saw advertised the social media platform Facebook.
The advertisement called for people interested in working from home as an “online shopper,” earning commissions from such jobs.
She initially joined the scheme and managed on the first day to earn RMB183 in commissions via a trial account. However, on the second day, she was asked to create a new account under her name and to load RMB4,580 in it to continue shopping.
She was also asked by an alleged website administrator to increase her deposit by more than RMB20,000. She felt that there was something suspicious about the scheme and reported to the PJ, claiming to have lost about RMB4,500.