HKSAR v. Lee Shun Fat

DCCC858/2011

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 858 OF 2011

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to 4 charges of dealing with property known or believed to represent the proceeds of an indictable offence contrary to section 25(1) and (3) of the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance, Cap.455, Laws of Hong Kong, those being Charges 1, 3, 4 and 5 on the indictment.

2.The offences taking place as they did between March 2009 and May 2010 relate to frauds on foreign nationals, Charge 1, a Singaporean victim; Charge 3, a Japanese victim; Charge 4, an Australian victim and Charge 5, a Canadian victim who were duped into making large deposits into bank accounts opened up by yourself, having been told by the perpetrators of the fraud that they had insider information relating to certain investments. Each of the victims were later told that their investments had been successful but in order to obtain the profit they had to pay a further handling charge. Unsurprisingly, each of the victims later on discovered that their investments were non-existent and the total amount of moneys transferred to the four separate accounts by the victims in this way amounted to just over HK$4 million. 

3.Whilst I am prepared to accept that you were not instrumental in the frauds themselves, it is right to say that you played an important role in that you opened up these bank accounts, you were the sole signatory of each of them, you withdrew the moneys from the account in cash on the day after or the second day after the deposits had been made and you passed the moneys over to the perpetrators of the fraud, receiving a reward of some $500 or thereabouts for each transaction.  I am told that there were 31 such transactions meaning that your reward would have been in the region of $15,000 or thereabouts. 

4.You are 54 years of age, divorced and have three grown-up children.  You are a construction site worker and have two previous criminal convictions which are unrelated. 

5.Offences such as these are, of course, serious because they are an attempt to legitimise the proceeds of criminal offences and in this case I take account particularly of the fact that there is an international element to each of these offences and each of the victims lost a considerable amount of money.  In total, some $4 million has been lost.  These are aggravating features.  In addition to this the offences spanned a period of over a year during which time you made withdrawals from these accounts on no less than 31 occasions. 

6.In sentencing you I take account of your plea of guilty which is an indication of your remorse.  On Charge 1, I adopted a starting point of 4 years’ imprisonment.  This I will reduce by one-third to reflect your plea, coming to 32 months’ imprisonment on Charge 1. 

7.On Charges 3 and 4 my starting point is 18 months’ imprisonment on each charge which I similarly reduce by one-third, coming to 12 months’ imprisonment on Charges 3 and 4 which I will order to run concurrently with each other and concurrently to the sentence on Charge 1. 

8.On Charge 5 I adopt a starting point of 2 years’ imprisonment which will be reduced to 16 months’ imprisonment to reflect your plea.  I order 8 months of this sentence to run consecutively to the sentence on Charge 1, the balance concurrently, coming to an overall sentence of 40 months’ imprisonment in all.  This, of course, represents an overall starting point of 5 years’ imprisonment, one in which I have consciously increased by one year to reflect the aggravating features that I have identified. 

Please refer to CACC49/2012 for the relevant appeal(s) to the Court of Appeal.