HKSAR v. Ma Che Hou

On 6 August 2026, the Court of Appeal (Macrae Acting CJHC, Zervos and K Yeung JJA) dismissed the appeal against sentence in HKSAR v Ma Che Hou (CACC 242/2024), affirming a 56-month term imposed after a guilty plea to conspiracy to defraud. Mr Ira Lui (ADPP) and Mr Jason Lau (SPP), instructed by the Department of Justice, acted for the respondent.

The appellant was a member of a cross-border syndicate that recruited Hong Kong residents under false promises of well-paid work abroad. Five victims (PW1, PW3, PW6, PW8, PW10) were delivered to scam compounds in or near Myanmar ("China City" or "KK Park"), confined, forced to operate online fraud, and either compelled to work or ransomed. Three were physically assaulted; PW3, who had intellectual disability and hearing impairment, was beaten, handcuffed and locked in a cage (§§9-45). The appellant personally recruited victims, travelled to Cambodia, and arranged logistics via Telegram, including forwarding passports to a contact known as "小梦" and discussing pretexts used to lure victims abroad. Part of one victim's ransom (over HK$63,000) ultimately flowed into a cryptocurrency wallet and bank account held in the appellant's name (§44). Judge J Lam adopted a 7-year starting point before applying a one-third discount, yielding 56 months.

The sole ground of appeal challenged whether human-trafficking features (forced labour, ransom, assaults) could be taken into account as aggravating factors, given those facts lay outside the strict pleaded particulars of the conspiracy to defraud charge.

The Court held that:

(1) Features of human trafficking or forced labour may properly be treated as aggravating factors when sentencing for conspiracy to defraud, provided the term stays within the statutory maximum for the offence and complies with the totality principle (§§80-81).

(2) The Judge's reliance on those features was sound, and the sentence should not be disturbed (§87).

(3) The appellant was, however, fortunate to have been prosecuted in the District Court. Its 7-year ceiling operated as a cap on the otherwise appropriate sentence, and cases of this gravity should ordinarily be charged in the High Court (14-year maximum), and ought ultimately to attract the same maximum as kidnapping (§§85-86).

For prosecutors: charge human-trafficking conspiracies in the High Court; the District Court ceiling will continue to operate as a windfall until such conduct becomes a substantive offence in Hong Kong. For sentencing courts: forced-labour and trafficking facts can aggravate a conspiracy to defraud sentence, but cannot push the term past the statutory maximum. Defence counsel should note the Court's pointed observation that the syndicate openly discussed Hong Kong's lack of a specific trafficking offence as part of its planning (§§41-42).