18 years’ jail for Hong Kong manager who stole HK$61 million by adding ‘0’ to cheques
Property manager falsified reimbursements issued to him for work done, stealing HK$61.1 million from owners’ corporation over a decade
A Hong Kong property manager has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after bilking a housing estate out of HK$61.1 million (US$7.8 million) over a decade by inflating his reimbursement claims tenfold with the addition of a zero to issued cheques.
The High Court on Tuesday found that Wong Wai-lung, who gambled all the money away, deserved a deterrent sentence for acting in gross breach of the trust placed in him as the person in charge of overseeing the chequebooks and financial documents of Choi Ming Court in Tseung Kwan O between 2011 and 2021.
“The facts showed that the defendant committed the offences in an elaborate and well-planned manner,” Mr Justice Johnny Chan Jong-herng said.
The HK$61.1 million is the single largest sum stolen from the owners’ corporation of a Hong Kong residential complex to date.
Wong, 53, a father of one, admitted that he had inflated the amounts in reimbursement cheques issued by the estate’s owners’ corporation for work expenses, adding a zero to the signed cheques before cashing them.
The defendant said he would only write the amounts in numbers when he had the cheques signed, adding that he would make the corporation’s signatories endorse genuine and fraudulent payments at the same time so that he would not be found out.
He had also falsified Choi Ming Court’s passbooks, bank statements and confirmation letters by cutting, pasting and photocopying them before submitting them to his employer, Guardian Property Management, for verification and auditing purposes.