Crime | Singaporeans attracted to scam on VIP room investment

Two female Singaporeans were victims of a scam in an alleged investment scheme in a Macau VIP room, the Judiciary Police (PJ) stated during a press conference held yesterday.

The case goes back to last year when the two women met in Singapore with a 52-year-old male resident of the city-state who told them he owned a Macau-based company operating a VIP room in a Macau casino. He proceeded to ask if they were interested in investing in such a business due to its high revenue.

The women accepted and on December 18 last year they travelled to Macau where they were taken to a VIP room of a casino, which the suspect said belonged to his company.

They finally decided to invest USD50,000 each (around MOP400,000) and deposited the sum in an account that was set up in that VIP room.

Claiming that the contract would be signed later, the man soon vanished leaving the two women without any contact. They then decided to present a complaint to the PJ on January 8 this year.

The police started to investigate the case and on March 2, the man was caught while trying to leave Macau. The suspect admitted that the money was promptly withdrawn from the account right after the deposit, admitting also that he was never involved with the VIP room aside from having an open account there.

He also said that he lost all the money in gambling.

In a separate case,  what initially would look like another episode of overcharging by a taxi driver eventually revealed something bigger, leading to four people being held under police custody.

The case started with a couple of tourists hailing a taxi in Cotai that requested MOP100 to take them to the desired location.

The couple refused to pay and left the car, but in the rush they left a mobile phone inside.

This initiated some confusion, with the taxi driver picking up a call from the couple saying they had been passengers inside the taxi. The taxi driver then asked the person with him what the consequences of keeping the phone would be, and fearing he would get caught, passed it to this second individual who was also a taxi driver.

As the police received the complaint and started to investigate the first taxi driver, the police caught a man of around 50-years-old.

The second individual who was aged 30 years, feared for his security too, and decided to pass the phone to a third driver who then took it to a car detailing shop where he exchanged it for cash.

Multiple traces led the police to the car detailing shop where the police caught one of the employees, a Vietnam national, in the possession not only of the “lost” phone but a total of four mobiles phones, all suspected of being stolen or lost by the lawful owners.

The shopkeeper then admitted that all the phones were bought by different taxi drivers who usually go to the shop to sell these kind of goods.

The first taxi driver was charged with unlawful appropriation of the good, while the other two drivers and the shop employee were charged with receiving stolen goods.