Crime | Sexual abuse case filed over nightclub date in Macau

A 23-year-old woman from the mainland is accusing a 29-year-old male, also from the mainland, of sexual abuse after a night out filled with drinking at a Macau nightclub, a Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson informed yesterday at the daily joint press conference of the police forces held at the Public Security Police Force (PSP) facilities.

The case was revealed to the PSP by a friend of the victim with whom she traveled initially to Macau on August 8.

According to the victim, she and her friend arrived in Macau and lodged in a hotel in Cotai.

The next day, she said they had an argument and she decided to leave by herself and go to a nightclub, also located in Cotai.

Around midnight she came across the suspect in the club and they chatted for a while and had several drinks together. She said she drank too much and lost consciousness, waking up on the next day at 10 a.m. naked in an unknown bedroom with the suspect lying next to her.

At that moment, she suspected she had been abused by the man and called her friend, who alerted the police.

Deployed to the venue, the PJ officers found the suspect and took him into custody for questioning.

To the police, the man admitted he had sex with the woman, but said that she had consented to it.

Further investigation and analysis of surveillance camera footage from the nightclub and hotel revealed, according to the PJ, that the victim was in an altered state of consciousness before leaving the venue with the suspect, reason enough for the PJ to consider the victim’s allegations and proceed with the forwarding of the case to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) under the charge of “sexual abuse to person incapable of offering resistance.”

Octogenarian scammed  in ‘luck ceremony’

An 81-year-old woman from Macau was involved in a scam carried out by two women from the mainland who took from her cash and jewelry worth around MOP180,000, the PJ spokesperson informed yesterday.

The case initially reported on May 13 this year finally saw some development on August 8, when one of the suspects was caught while trying to reenter Macau.

In May, the victim told the PJ that while she was at the market buying vegetables she was approached by one of the suspects, a 43-year-old woman from the mainland, who said that her foot was hurting and she needed to find a woman who would perform a ceremony at a temple to heal her, asking the victim for help to find this woman.

When they arrived at the temple, they found the other person who, after performing a ceremony to heal the first of the two, convinced the elderly woman to also perform a ceremony to “free her family from bad luck.”

As the first woman was “miraculously” healed after the ceremony and she said she was worried about her family, she believed in the power of the woman to act as an intermediary to the gods and, following instructions from the second woman, she returned home to get all her assets that included cash, rings, and several gold items worth some MOP180,000.

Then, she took the items to a building at Avenida de Horta e Costa, where the woman was waiting to perform the ceremony.

After a while, a red bag was returned the victim, into which she believed her belongings had been placed. The scammers said that the ceremony had been held and the items had been “blessed.”

The scammer asked the elderly woman not to open the red bag for a period of at least two or three days so as to not “break the good luck spell.” The victim took the bag home but the next day, she started to suspect that something was not right and decided to open it. There was nothing but a few vegetables inside, with no sign of the cash or jewelry. She then went to PJ to file the complaint, but the PJ quickly understood that the two suspects had crossed the border already into the mainland and they were not able to do anything until last Thursday, when one of them tried to reenter the territory.

One of the women was detained and presented to the MP the next day for an aggravated scam.

Man tries to buy watch with ‘fake coupons’

The spokesperson also informed that a mainland male had been caught by the PJ on August 9 trying to acquire a luxury watch at a local shop using a large number of coupons, deemed to be forged.

The case was reported by the shopkeeper, who warned the police of the case.

According to the shopkeeper, the man asked to pay for a wristwatch worth MOP49,000 with 49 coupons worth MOP1,000 each, but the staff suspected immediately that the coupons had been forged.

To the police, the suspect admitted he bought those coupons in early August on the Internet for about one-third of the face value; about MOP16,000.

To the police, he said that he had been warned, by the seller, that he could not use the coupons in Macau shops, but still he decided to try his luck. He is now being charged with perpetrating a scam and the case has already been forwarded to the MP.