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Fraud busters' work commended
 WCIP Tsang So Chit-kwan |
Three Commercial Crime Bureau Officers recently received Commanding Officer's Commendations for their work in a complicated fraud case. Woman Chief Inspector Tsang So Chit-kwan, Senior Inspector Kong Ming-choi and Police Constable Chan Ting-hon were the sleuths.
In 1998, reports were received several people were unable to retrieve money deposited in a company. The case was referred to Police amid suspicions the company might have engaged in illegal activities. "As we did not have much information, we did not know at the beginning whether the company was involved in defrauding its customers or accepting deposits without a licence," Mrs Tsang said.
Officers contacted customers and found that more than 400 of them, including company employees, had fallen prey to the fraud, involving some $100 million.
"To dig out evidence, we studied more than 1,000 files on the company's deposit customers," SIP Kong said.
Investigations revealed the company owner was issued with a licence in 1993 to carry out money lending. However, he had at the same time been engaged in taking deposits from customers and paying interest to them.
The owner signed in his personal capacity deposit certificates and paid holders a monthly interest of 1 to 1.5 per cent. The amount of each deposit ranged from $10,000 to $10 million.
Mr Kong said the case differed from other frauds in that the company owner used the high interest rate to attract customers and paid the interest out of their deposits. However, the company owner had incurred heavy losses and the customers could not get back their money.
The company owner was charged under the Banking Ordinance for taking deposits without being authorised. In passing sentence, the Court took the unusual step, at the prosecution's request, to make a Criminal Bankruptcy Order for a sum of almost $100 million to enable the victims to claim damages without resorting to civil proceedings.
The company owner was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in November last year, but the term has since been increased to 29 months after the Department of Justice lodged an appeal.