Man loses over one million HKD after trusting friend with money deposit

The Judiciary Police (PJ) has apprehended one man suspected of fraud in respect to a case the police authority has been investigating since the end of last year.
During yesterday’s joint police press conference, the PJ reported the apprehension of the suspect, surnamed Hong. His capture only means that the suspect is now available for police interrogation, with two other suspects still at large.
The case traces back to the evening of November 3, 2019, when the self-claimed victim was gambling inside a casino located in Cotai. The victim needed money to gamble, and asked a friend to withdraw 1.1 million Hong Kong dollars from his VIP room account attached to that casino.
The friend, hereafter referred to as the second suspect, followed the instructions to pick up money from the casino VIP room.
After receiving the money, the second suspect handed the cash to Hong and instructed him to deposit it all into a VIP room at a casino located in Zona de Aterros do Porto Exterior (ZAPE).
However, Hong only deposited HKD800,000, according to the police investigation. He shared the remaining HKD300,000 with another man, the third suspect.
At approximately 8 p.m. on October 23, Hong entered Macau and was intercepted by the police authority at the immigration checkpoint.
Upon police interrogation, Hong admitted that the second suspect had indeed asked him to deposit the money into the ZAPE casino VIP room. However, he denied the accusation that he had only deposited HKD800,000 and kept the rest of the money.
Hong, 53, identified himself as a freelancer. The police charged Hong with abuse of credit.
Apart from this gaming related crime case, the PJ also revealed intelligence on another case concerning casino activities.
Around midnight on October 25, 44-year-old mainlander Guo took a bundle of counterfeit banknotes to a casino cage (or casino exchange) to exchange them for gambling chips. Guo presented the bundle of 100 fake banknotes, each similar to a 1,000-pataca banknote.
The casino cage worker found Guo’s behavior strange and reported him to the police authority.
Investigating police officers later confirmed that Guo had another bundle of 100 of the same counterfeit banknotes.
Guo said that he was paid 900 Chinese yuan earlier, in mainland China, to exchange these banknotes for casino chips. Guo also claimed that he didn’t know that he was using counterfeit notes for the exchange.
Last month, the PJ captured two local men who also used fake banknotes to carry out fraud.
In total, the two local men, together with another two mainland men, used counterfeit banknotes to exchange cash casino chips equivalent to HKD10.6 million.
Man charged in
second-hand sale fraud
The Judiciary Police (PJ) has charged a local man with fraud after he allegedly sold a broken second-hand television to another person.
The suspect, Lam, who is in his 30s, had recently purchased a used television from a second-hand store for 400 patacas.
After the purchase, Lam changed the fuse of the television by himself and repackaged it for sale. Later, he sold the television to the victim for 2,300 patacas via an online platform. Lam promised the buyer a 15-day refund policy if the television had problems.
Later, the victim realized that the TV could not be used and wanted to return the TV to Lam. However, the victim was unable to reach Lam and reported the case to the police authority.