The Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested two mainlanders for illegal currency exchange involving fake casino chips and organised crime on Tuesday, PJ spokesman Cheong Siu Keong said during a special press conference yesterday.
Cheong identified the suspects as 31- and 23-year-old males surnamed Zhao and Li, who told police that they own an express delivery station and work as a delivery worker, respectively.
According to Cheong, around 11 p.m. on August 25, the Judiciary Police received a report from a casino in the Outer Harbour Land Reclamation Zone (generally known as Zape – its Portuguese acronym) that its cashier received 12 fake HK$10,000 denomination gambling chips from two victims who turned witnesses.
Under questioning, Cheong said, the two victims told police that they had engaged in an illegal currency exchange with Zhao and Li who they paid 50,000 yuan for gaming chips worth HK$60,000.
Cheong said that PJ officers identified the two suspects through CCTV footage, but both had already left Macau and returned to the mainland prior to the report.
According to Cheong, on Tuesday night, Zhao and Li returned to Macau and planned to commit another crime involving bogus gambling chips, but they got arrested in time by PJ officers.
PJ officers discovered that since August the duo had worked for the same criminal syndicate, smuggling counterfeit casino chips into Macau for illicit currency exchange. For every fake HK$10,000 chip exchanged, they received a “commission” of 1,000 yuan. PJ officers seized a total of twenty HK$10,000 chips and two smart phones from Zhao and Li, Cheong said.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing charges of fraud and organised crime.
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the two suspects from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a van yesterday. – Photo: Armindo Neves
