Cases involving theft of gambling money, currency exchange scams, and document forgery to trick casino security staff topped the list of reported crimes during yesterday’s joint press conference from the police forces.
In the conference held at the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters, the police force reported a case involving a restaurant employee who is being accused of embezzlement after the owner of the establishment found that she had taken a total of MOP64,000 from the restaurant’s safe box in order to repay a gambling debt.
The case took place on August 27, when the 39-year-old woman from the mainland took the opportunity to steal the money from the restaurant safe box, while the manager was enjoying his annual leave. The manager had given her the keys two days earlier, as she had been placed be in charge of the restaurant during that period.
The woman justified her unlawful behavior to the PJ with the need to repay a gambling debt.
She has been presented to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) under the charge of breach of trust.
Currency exchange scams persist
The number of currency exchange scams continues to grow with new cases being reported almost every day.
This weekend, the PJ reported to have received a case from the Public Security Police Force (PSP) for the investigation of a 34-year-old mainland resident who is being accused of scamming his compatriot over the exchange of RMB into HKD to play in local casinos.
The incident occurred on August 29 when the victim contacted the suspect to acquire HKD300,000 to play in the casinos. According to the report, they met at a restaurant where the deal was made and then headed to the victim’s hotel room where the suspect asked the victim to transfer RMB275,700 to a mainland bank account.
After the banking transfer, the suspect told the victim that they would need to wait for a third person who would bring the cash in HKD, so they both went down to the hotel lobby.
Eventually and after some time without any contact from this alleged third person, the victim felt that he had been scammed and decided to make a complaint to the PSP officer on duty in the casino.
Gambler robbed by his roommates
A man from the mainland has accused two other men of 27 and 45 years old of stealing a large sum of money he had left in the hotel room they were sharing.
The case was reported to the PSP last Saturday at around 2 p.m. The victim told the police that an envelope with HKD500,000 in cash had vanished from the hotel room he was sharing with two other men that had come together with him to Macau to gamble.
According to the victim’s testimony on that day, he had gone to the room to rest and left the envelope on the table. After some time he went down to play at the casino but realized that he had left the money in the room, calling to the first suspect to help him.
The first suspect replied that he had not seen any money in the room and that at the moment there was nobody in the room as both suspects were also out.
After a while, they returned and went to the room to realize that was no sign of the envelope or the cash, which led the victim to call the police.
During the investigation, the first suspect did not manage to present any identification document to the PSP officer, saying that all his documents were in a bag that was stored with the hotel’s concierge.
In the company of the officers, he then retrieved his bag from the concierge and while inspecting it, the PSP found a large sum in cash inside, amounting to HKD400,000.
The suspect told the police he had no idea how that money ended up there but, when questioned, the second suspect revealed to the police that the first suspect had found that the victim had left the money in the table and that besides keeping the larger share (HKD400,000) inside his bag, he had also split the remaining HKD100,000 into two parts, one of HKD90,000 which was given to the second suspect and another of HKD10,000 which the first suspect kept for himself.
The second suspect also said that he had already exchanged his share of HKD90,000 into RMB and transferred it into his bank account on the mainland.
Both suspects were presented to the MP yesterday on charges of aggravated theft.
Forged document for casino entry
The PSP spokesperson also reported the case of a man from the mainland who was caught after a report of a forged document.
The document was initially found by a Cotai hotel employee on August 21 and held for a few days, while staff waited for the owner to claim it.
After four days, the hotel decided to hand the document to the police who then realized that it was a forgery.
The PSP located the man on August 27 while he was trying to leave Macau by the Border Gate checkpoint.
When questioned, the man admitted that the document was forged and said that he had bought it on July 8 in Gongbei area for RMB1,000.
He also told the police that the reason that he had the document was that he wanted to enter local casinos and he was not yet 21-years-old, the minimum age to access the gaming areas of Macau integrated resorts.
He was presented to the MP on the charge of document forgery on August 30.
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