Citizen cops: Hong Kong sleuths who help crack crime honoured with police awards

2016/6/19

Requests to transfer cash come across Ng Hoi-lai's desk all the time in her work at a currency exchange. But she noted something odd about one such request, involving HK$300,000 an elderly person wanted to transfer to his son.

■ Ng Hoi-lai (left) and Ng Kong-naat were among 40 people honoured

Ng quickly realised the account did not belong to the son and, after a few inquiries, she had no hesitation in passing the case on to police.

It is one of three such fraud cases Ng helped to crack in the six months to January - and her actions saw her receive one of 40 Good Citizen Awards from the police yesterday.

Other recipients were honoured for tackling a range of crimes such as robbery, wounding, drug trafficking and indecent assault last year.

The awards are presented by the force twice a year.

"These 40 awardees really deserve our praise, because their wisdom and courage really helped police arrest suspects," Kwok Wing-keung, a member of the government's Fight Crime Committee, said at the award ceremony. "More importantly, they showed a spirit of cooperation between the public and the police, conveying positive energy to the whole society."

Another recipient involved in fighting financial crime was bank clerk Hon Oi-lin, who in May last year helped crack a cross-border money laundering case. She became suspicious when she saw a remittance from overseas into the account of a Hong Kong business, but noted a discrepancy with the actual nature of the company's business.

Suspicious, she contacted the account holder to ask for the invoice as proof. After receiving only vague responses, she rejected the remittance and contacted police. It turned out the account owner had been involved in laundering more than HK$2 million.

"We are well trained and once we detect anything suspicious, we call the police," she said.

■ Currency exchange worker Hon Oi-lin helped crack three fraud cases

The ceremony comes at a time when polls show growing distrust of the police amid concern over their handling of last year's Occupy protests.

Shirley Yuen, chief executive of sponsor the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, touched on that as she said: "During the past 10 months, the relationship between the public and the police has been challenged a lot, but I hope our public and the police can work jointly to better develop society."

Sonny Au Chi-kwong, acting deputy commissioner of police, said the crime rate per 100,000 citizens fell below 1,000 for the first time since 1973 last year, at 936 crimes.

Chief Superintendent Tsui Wai-hung said: "In recent years, online fraud is happening more frequently, and the suspects always make use of the lack of awareness of senior citizens."

Source: South China Morning Post