A Hong Kong property manager has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after bilking a housing estate out of HK$61.1 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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.
A regular auditing exercise in May 2021 revealed a total shortfall of HK$49.8 million in three of the estate’s 10 bank accounts. The management company reported the case to police the following month.