Crime | Luck of the tables runs out with friends

A 45-year-old woman from the mainland lost all her casino winnings while trusting a friend to transfer the money to her bank account, the Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson informed yesterday during a joint press conference held at the Public Security Police Force (PSP) venue.
According to the information disclosed by the spokesperson, the woman, who arrived in Macau to try her luck at the local casinos, could not believe her further luck when she found a man who offered her HKD300,000 to play without asking for anything, besides returning the same amount.

The woman immediately gambled the money and obtained a total of HKD565,000, almost double the amount she had played.

Fulfilling the original agreement, she sought out her friend and returned the HKD300,000 that she had received from him.

After receiving his money, the man offered to help her transfer the remaining money into her account on the mainland, an offer that she accepted.

After a while, believing that everything was perfect, she returned to the mainland.

To her surprise, the following day she realized that her winnings had not been transferred into her bank account and her alleged friend had scammed her.

She returned to Macau on September 13 to file a complaint with the PJ.

After identifying the suspect with the help of the casino surveillance cameras, the police commenced a search for him and caught him on September 22 as he was trying to re-enter Macau through the border gate checkpoint.

He was presented to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) charged with breach of trust.

In a separate case also reported by the police, a local man aged 31 was caught after robbing a restaurant where he was a regular customer.

According to the PJ spokesperson, the incident occurred on September 18 when the owner of the shop noticed that the money from the cash register had disappeared while the shop had been closed for lunch break (from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.).

According to the owner, who immediately made a complaint to the PJ, MOP7,500 was missing.

Using video surveillance cameras, the PJ found that a restaurant regular had hidden inside the venue while it was closed for break time.

After taking the money from the cash register he managed to escape through a window.

On September 22, the PJ finally caught the thief while he was re-entering Macau from the mainland through the border gate checkpoint.

Upon questioning, the man admitted to the crime and said he needed to repay a gambling debt.

During the investigation, the police also discovered that the man had a record of similar crimes and had been sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 2009. He had been released from jail in 2017 after serving his sentence.

In another story, the PSP spokesperson informed that two local men had been detained after being found guilty of appropriating lost property.

The case was reported to the police on September 19, when a local man was at a karaoke venue located at Rua de Francisco Xavier Pereira in central Macau.

The man told the police that he had to leave the venue for a few minutes to withdraw money at an ATM machine. At the time, a friend was sitting with him at one table where he had two mobile phones.

Upon returning to the karaoke place, he realized that his friend had changed tables and the phones were no longer there.

The venue staff had no idea about the whereabouts of the mobile phones. The victim called the PSP, who reviewed video surveillance footage with the venue staff and found that two suspects took the phones.

Street surveillance camera footage showed that the two suspects then took a taxi.

The police contacted the taxi driver who remembered the two customers, because they had asked to be dropped off in different locations (Areia Preta and Fai Chi Kei).

While investigating the area on September 20 at around 11 p.m., the police found the two suspects.

They confessed to finding and taking the phones and selling them in Gongbei, Zhuhai for the equivalent of MOP2,800.

According to the victim, the phones were valued at MOP10,000 each.

Phone and WeChat Scams continue to grow

According to the Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson, despite constant warnings, scams taking place over phone calls and WeChat conversations continue to occur, targeting residents and non-residents alike.

During yesterday’s press conference, the PJ reported that a non-resident woman had been caught in a scam over an investment.

On September 23, she told the police that she had met a man over WeChat in November 2017, and that they had been chatting until April 2018.

The man claimed to be a staff member at a banking institution at that time, and offered to help to invest her money in a profitable business.

In June, the woman accepted the offer and transferred HKD40,000 to him, but after some time she lost contact with him and never saw any return from her investment. She then filed a complaint with the PJ.

In a separate story, a local woman aged 55 claimed to have lost a total of RMB120,000 through a phone scam.

Thinking she was speaking to a friend who had changed his phone number, the woman recorded a new number under her alleged friend’s name. She was called the next day, when he claimed that he had been arrested in the mainland and needed money to bail him out.

The woman transferred money to the man on three different occasions, amounting to a total of RMB120,000.

On September 22, after not hearing from the person for several days, the woman called the friend’s original number and realized that she had been scammed. She presented the complaint to the PJ. RM