A local croupier has been sentenced by the Court of Final Appeal (TUI) to four years and three months in jail for participating with five players in a fraudulent scheme that caused damage valued at HKD2.18 million to the casino at which he was working, the office of the president of the TUI has revealed.
According to the final sentence, the six people agreed to the unlawful scheme and shared tasks and profits from the scam that would deliver unlawful payouts to players for bets that were never placed.
The TUI also said that it was proved in the courts that the defendants had created a group chat on WeChat to coordinate the illegal activities and give instructions to the different members of the group on when to act.
In the first trial, at the Court of First Instance (TJB), the judges sentenced five of the six defendants to six crimes of embezzlement with sentences that ranged from three to four and half years of imprisonment. It sentenced the last member to 9 months imprisonment for a single count of the same crime and required the last member to pay compensation to the casino owner.
The first two defendants in the case, one of the players and the croupier, appealed the sentence to the Court of Second Instance (TSI) which partially agreed with the claims but also judged that the acts performed by the defendants were more related to the crime of aggravated fraud, and not to embezzlement. The TSI sentenced the defendants to only slightly shorter terms (less three months).
But the Public Prosecutions Office disagreed with the change of the crime typology and appealed to the TUI.
After examining the facts and the claims, the TUI decided the defendants’ actions did constitute aggravated fraud rather than embezzlement. The TUI decided to keep the sentences, but noted aggravated fraud has a harsher penal framework than the previous one. The court took into account the court practice of not amending a prison sentence to a harsher one after a reduction, and kept the sentences decided by the TSI.
